May 30, 2007
Another Way That Google Owns Us
SFist Dan, contributing
Have you checked out the latest hack to Google Maps? Somehow they've added street views, which lets you take a look at an intersection (say, 16th and Mission) from a street-level camera. You can get a street view of almost any intersection in the city, which is kinda freaky, especially because we saw two guys on the 16th and Mission street view doing...um, well, what lots of people do at 16th and Mission.
But where are these pictures coming from? We did a quick check of our favorite security-cammed intersection (Haight/Webster) and found that the images definitely weren't being streamed from those cameras. After messing with it, it looks like the Google folks went and drove around the city with some kind of James-Bond-like 360-degree handy-cam. Aside from the obvious privacy concerns -- the page declares that "Google takes concerns about its services very seriously," but doesn't mention anything at all about privacy, which is weird because, um, you can see into people's windows using this thing.
And...how did they do this? Any Googlers out there willing to spring a leak?
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I wonder if/ how often they plan to update this. Looks like the current images were taken not long after Cody's on Stockton closed.
Although it's mildly creepy, I really like moving the lil yellow man icon around the city and seeing the shadow of the photo pop-up blanketing several blocks of SF. It gives me a sense of Google-like power.
Holy crap! That is only just blurry enough that you can't read the license plates on the cars. I like the Bay Bridge view where you can check out the construction on the new eastern span.
Creepy doesn't even start to describe looking at a picture of the front of my house. And I'd just gotten used to the fact that Google has aerial photos of my neighborhood.
they licensed data from "immersive media", more here http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/29/google-maps-now-with-360-streetside-views/
When Dan sent me this story, it totally freaked me out -- I found a pic of my front door. Kinda cool. Kinda discomforting.
Kinda google.
You can see in the photos that the security cameras hadn't been installed yet at H&W, or at our house.
It is amazing how many drug dealers you can see around Rose and Webster (SFHA property) and the 400 block of Haight. At least that relieves us of the burden of photographing them ourselves.
I think everyone needs to relax. These photos seem to be old and I am guessing infrequent. There is nothing personally identifiable here. Am I missing something? It seems fine to me.
Picture of the car used to create the images:
blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/05/photos_the_geek.html
The privacy issues are not exactly clear. The public sphere is basically just that: you have no expectation of privacy on the street (with certain exceptions, like camera phone upskirting). You also don't have any expectation of privacy if you leave your blinds open. But our case law hasn't necessarily dealt with the current prevalence of technology for capturing the public sphere.
The SF photos look like they were taken in January or February.
The shot of the Castro Theater shows a sign advertising "Gay Movie Night" for January 18th. "Charlotte's Web" is playing at the Loews Metreon.
Saw these white vans driving around MARIN last month. I was told they would be used to 3D map every street in the USA. And they when you drive you can see where you are and where you will be going, not in real time but archived video
Microsoft has the same thing, at least for SF and Seattle. (preview.local.live.com)
Amazon did something like this a few years back with their A9 seatch engine and maps. Imagine my surprise when I looked up the address for my then job and the pictures they had of that block featured me walking to my office.
True story.
Any idea what the big to-do was in UN plaza on the day they photographed it?
It's the "Heart of the City" farmer's market (Sundays and Wednesdays). There's a kettle corn stand on facing Hyde Street. Zooming in, I can also see a plant vendor from that side.
It must have been done very recently. I just looked at my house and I remember seeing two of the people in the picture outside my house a few weeks ago. That's a lot of picture taking...
I saw a couple of shots in which I could read the license plates very clearly. I checked out the Warfield and Regina Spektor was playing so that would place that shot on or about April 30th.
This is pretty damn awesome.And they are pretty much current.These were taken when Conan O'Brian was in town.
BoingBoing.net has its own blog post on this subject today.
Does this mean we can now go back to photographing buildings without security guards rushing us off the property for fear that we're actually bomb-crazed terrorists trying to case the neighborhood?
JG
Blonde Redhead is playing at Bimbo's 365, so that area of North Beach was shot in April (the two concerts were 4/23 and 4/24).
@Ian, in reply to "Picture of the car used to create the images:
blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/05/photos_the_geek.html"
That is the vehicle for Tele Atlas, not Immersive Media (Google Street View maps source).
@Googly, my mistake then. I read on Digg that Tele Atlas was the source for Street View, and they linked to the Wired blog.
Ok, I'm kind of creeped out. I have multiple properties here in SF, and you can literally look into my windows. Also, you can CLEARLY see one of my neighbors leaving his car and his license plate is totally legible. It's cool, but I think slightly dangerous.
i am totally going to "shoot the duck" if i see one of those vans
They must have shot my place in Russian Hill during Christmas time because my lights are up.
This is creepy but so much fun.
Okay, im noticing this "*gasp!* privacy!" overtone to the comments here.
A couple of notes... these are not images of private things. The view of the outside of your house on a public street is not a private thing. Your license plate is not a private thing, thousands of people see it every day just by driving in public. Its like waving a giant orange flag in a busy subway station and trying to tell people that looking at the flag or telling people about it is somehow a violation of your privacy.
Additionally, if you can, as some people have mentioned, see into the windows of houses, then i think the issue here isnt that the people can see, but that the owners of that home must not care, since any schmo on the street could also see in... and that person is RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE. I dont see how its an "invasion of privacy" if its something you could easily see while walking down that street.
Lets face it. If anyone knows your address enough to punch it into google maps and get a result, then they also have the ability to simply go to that location themselves, like they have been able to since we started naming streets and numbering houses.
Please go find something else to wring your hands and fret about. This one is a non-starter. Im sure youll find *something*
Daikon,
Technically, the window thing is more of an invasion than you just looking in from the street. If you look at the pictures, they're taken from a much higher place than any normal person (under eight feet tall) can see from. You can see things inside second-floor windows that you can't expect to see from the street, and, more importantly, you're on camera.
Put it this way - if some strange dude was standing outside your house on a ladder taking photos of the inside of your second floor without your permission, what would you do?
I'd go outside and tell him to knock it off, then I'd call the police if he wouldn't.
Far-fetched? Sure. But pretty reasonable.
Freaky though it may be, I don't think you can stop someone from standing on the sidewalk and looking at your windows. It's reasonable to expect that if something is in plan view of a public area -- including areas in which someone might be standing on a stepladder -- then a member of the public might see it.
As far as seeing license plates: I can look out the window and see dozens of license plates passing by. How is this different?
I know what all those people standing in line at UN Plaza was..It was people waiting to get Conan O'brien tickets at the orpheum
but it's pieced together from different times, so it doesn't look quite right
The Big Boys (i.e., the New York Times) made this issue a feature story today. Didn't really add much more information than we already knew, but it's apparently a wide enough phenomenon that the NYT bothered to cover it.
I have a friend who drove a car around SF to take these kinds of images. There is a camera mounted on the car, and he gets paid $15 an hour to drive it around town for Google. I think it's a pretty good job. These are all things you can see from a car anyway, that seems totally legal and fair.
I added here the best Street View http://www.geo-trotter.com/cat-street-view.php