G-maps wtf?

[Chairman Risus]

But not as much as your mom.

I'm not sure if anyone appreciates the fact "your mother" jokes spans language barriers as much as I do right now.

[Jasper]

They're so funny, even a caveman would laugh!

[PopeTom]

They're so funny, even a caveman would laugh!

FUCK YOU, MY MOM WAS KILLED BY A LAUGHING CAVEMAN!!!
                                    \\

[PeregrineBF]

The way I see it is, if it's visible from a public street it's fair game. The shouldn't be driving on private driveways/roads, but they have just as much right to take pictures as anyone else.

Or should we have stopped George Holliday from publishing the Rodney King video because the police officers didn't consent? (Actually, that's not the best analogy, since Holliday was on private property and the beating was on public property, but it was visible from other public property.)..

[Triple Zero]

The way I see it is, if it's visible from a public street it's fair game. The shouldn't be driving on private driveways/roads, but they have just as much right to take pictures as anyone else.

superficially it's the same information as anyone could get to, yes.

BUT

it's not.

because putting all that information, aggregated in a huge-ass easily searchable database FUNDAMENTALLY changes the nature of such information.

if I wanted to know the "easiest to rob appartment in neighbourhood X", I could spend half an hour on Streetview instead of having to get up, go to neighbourhood X and be all suspicious-like.

and that is just one of the many many examples.

other thing is, I see somebody I know on streetview. He's smoking a cigarette. What if he gets into a horrible fight with his gf over it because he supposedly quit?

What if it's not a cigarette but his car at the house of someone he's cheating with?

Without streetview he'd just have to worry about people in the immediate vicinity, but now everyone of his friends and partner's friends might stumble upon it months later.

Sure it's not nearly as bad as continuous surveillance, but with the immense amount of pictures stored in that database, there's bound to be snapshots taken at moments that ARE just as bad as continuous surveillance.

Also Streetview pretends to blur out the faces of people. They miss some. And if you know the person whose face is blurred, from context, clothing and blurred facial features you can easily positively identify them anyway. All they have protected against is somebody scraping all those pictures and creating a huge facial recognition database, but then, who'd do that (it's a LOT of effort, more a theoretical danger than a real one).

I can go on.

Thing is, I do like Streetview. It's very useful in all sorts of circumstances just as varied as the creepy privacy invasion circumstances I exampled above.

It's there and it's useful. It's also not going away.

But that doesn't mean it is suddenly okay.

[AFK]

Can someone please explain to me why the guys at google think this is an acceptable level of imagery to be freely available and easily accessible on the internet?



Yes, that is my parents bedroom.



... Am I over-reacting, or am I justified in WTF-ing at the new level of detail on google maps?

That IS horrible.  I mean, who the fuck has white curtains?  Clearly purple was the color they should have chosen. 

[bds]

Can someone please explain to me why the guys at google think this is an acceptable level of imagery to be freely available and easily accessible on the internet?



Yes, that is my parents bedroom.



... Am I over-reacting, or am I justified in WTF-ing at the new level of detail on google maps?

That IS horrible.  I mean, who the fuck has white curtains?  Clearly purple was the color they should have chosen. 

Yeah, my bad, heh.

[Cramulus]

Also Streetview pretends to blur out the faces of people. They miss some. And if you know the person whose face is blurred, from context, clothing and blurred facial features you can easily positively identify them anyway. All they have protected against is somebody scraping all those pictures and creating a huge facial recognition database, but then, who'd do that (it's a LOT of effort, more a theoretical danger than a real one).

hey, in your opinion, how likely is it that this will happen in the next 10 years?

because it's the one thing keeping me from making pr0n

[Rumckle]

There is a way to get around that:

[Enrico Salazar]

And everybody know that Plague is coming
Everybody know that it moving fast
Everybody know that naked man and woman
Are just shining artifact of past
Everybody know scene is dead
But there will be meter on your bed
That disclose
What everybody know...


Leonard "anything for a laugh" Cohen - Everybody Know

[Jenne]

And everybody know that Plague is coming
Everybody know that it moving fast
Everybody know that naked man and woman
Are just shining artifact of past
Everybody know scene is dead
But there will be meter on your bed
That disclose
What everybody know...


Leonard "anything for a laugh" Cohen - Everybody Know

+1000

And no, I have no illusions of privacy here in Suburbian Hell...and the fact that google maps has had the wrong fucking house for my address for a while leads me to believe they aren't as smartypants as they'd have you think.  NOT that I'm going to contact them and tell them, however.

[Triple Zero]

Also Streetview pretends to blur out the faces of people. They miss some. And if you know the person whose face is blurred, from context, clothing and blurred facial features you can easily positively identify them anyway. All they have protected against is somebody scraping all those pictures and creating a huge facial recognition database, but then, who'd do that (it's a LOT of effort, more a theoretical danger than a real one).

hey, in your opinion, how likely is it that this will happen in the next 10 years?

because it's the one thing keeping me from making pr0n

I agree, pr0n is the other way to get "facial" recognition.









Um anyway I'm not really sure what you're getting at? Part of it is already being done. Dutch ID cards and passports, you're not allowed to smile on them and have to face the camera straight and fit within a certain part of the frame, etc. Part of these requirements only make sense in the context of automated face recognition systems, needing normalized face data. But are not of any value to a human. Also i wouldnt be surprised if the biometric data (eye-nose-mouth distances or whatnot) calculated from these mugshots are stored in the RFID chip in the card.

It really depends, especially if you have a huge database, you're not going to get a very accurate recognition rate. Think of how well a trained team of humans could do it with the streetview pics. If they tried really hard. I think that after about 500 faces or so you will find people that really look alike if the shot is slightly blurry. No computer is going to beat that. Maybe (BIG maybe) in 10 years but not by a very large margin, as the information just isn't there.
Unless the surveillance cameras get a LOT better. But they probably won't because megapixels might get cheaper, but they are useless as quality camera lenses do not get cheaper. If you do have a very sharp high res shot of a face you can get a lot more features (moles, etc) and do pretty unique identification, I think.

I think that if they got the databases in place, you'd be able to say with 95% certainty when two faces are NOT the same. And, given context (like being in the same building within a few minutes), with 80% certainty that they ARE the same. And maybe get a reading of the best match of the faces of the employers of said building or any other limited list. But no way that you're going to positively identify everybody from the huge ass list of passport data.

It all depends on what you want to do. Some things are not very possible.

Also, a big disclaimer, I'm grabbing percentages out of thin air and really making some rough guesstimates.

[Suu]

FYI: Google Maps fuzzes out faces and license plates.

Actually, the street view really helped me when I was looking at apartments. I could get a good view of the surrounding neighborhood and landmarks to find the place.

[Triple Zero]

FYI: Google Maps fuzzes out faces and license plates.

eh yes that's what we were talking about:

Also Streetview pretends to blur out the faces of people. They miss some. And if you know the person whose face is blurred, from context, clothing and blurred facial features you can easily positively identify them anyway. All they have protected against is somebody scraping all those pictures and creating a huge facial recognition database, but then, who'd do that (it's a LOT of effort, more a theoretical danger than a real one).

[Suu]

I dunno. I don't let shit like this keep me up at night. If someone really wants to find me, there are alternative ways to do so besides blurry pictures on GoogleMaps.