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Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

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Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#11

Post by maxerickson »

jMyles wrote: post #8

Reading into the details of these kinds of "privacy implications" (particularly the desire to force publication delay and the force blurring of people or license plates), I'm left thinking that the "implications" are more stark for freedom than they are for privacy . Are there really privacy implications of any sort in publishing a series of photos of people and cars on a street that aren't already implicated by the…

The US constitution doesn't say much about privacy.

The 4th amendment restricts the government from doing things that would (in part) violate privacy of individuals, but it doesn't say much about what other citizens can do in public places.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#12

Post by moron4hire »

Perhaps we could consider what is going on here to be something of a small-townification of cities.

I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it. And sometimes they knew even if it was behind closed doors.

Prior to the current era of data ubiquity, to escape such a thing, you could find some level of anonymity in a crowd. Walking through Times Square in NYC, you're technically in public, but you're just another unremarkable person on an unremarkable day.

There is a certain level of ignorance about the greater world in a small town. I've witnessed people saying and doing very--how should I say--unprogressive things, "just" because they didn't know any better [0]. On the flip side, there is a certain level of indifference about the greater world in a city. I've seen no greater degree of true open-mindedness in cities, and I think that's due to a kind of shutting down and retreating from the full ocean of people that cities contain.

In other words, whether or not a certain person lives a public-by-default or private-by-default life, they're probably going to be exactly the same.

So what does this mean for privacy? Privacy is a continuum that is inversely correlated with how much contact you want to have with the outside world. 100% privacy requires 100% retreat from the world, which is childishly unrealistic. Either accept that society needs to know your face to be able to talk to you, or go move out into the desert and live a hermit's life. You can't expect to live in a community and be "anonymous", not now, not ever before.

I don't agree that one should be allowed to blur themselves out of other people's photos. If you're out in public, you agree to be seen. It's childish to say, "I don't want my photo online." You might as well say, "I don't want people on the bus to see my face." They are the same exact people online as they are on the bus.

[0] They should have known better, ignorance is no excuse here, but it's very easy to rationalize to yourself that the media provides an accurate depiction of people-unlike-you of whom you have no personal experience. I'm not sure my grandfather has ever met an African American man who confirms his racist stereotyping of them, but that doesn't stop him from adopting whole-cloth the image that they are all wanna-be rap stars, which I blame mostly on my grandfather being a raging asshole, but a small part on mainstream media providing black men with few other roles.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#13

Post by sdoering »

lorenzhs wrote: post #6
mastazi wrote: post #5

How do you actually use openstreetview.org? All I could see was a map, no imagery. At first some roads were highlighted in pink but as soon as I zoomed and panned a little bit, the pink lines disappeared...

It's under heavy load at the moment (probably some scaling issues), so responses are a bit slow. You click on the pink lines (and wait).

Even loading the pink lines took about 60 seconds last time I tried. So the heavy load seems to be very heavy indeed.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#14

Post by sdoering »

moron4hire wrote: post #12

Perhaps we could consider what is going on here to be something of a small-townification of cities. I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it. And sometimes they knew even if it was behind closed doors. Prior to the current era of data ubiquity, to escape such a thing, you could find some level of anonymity in a crowd. Walking through Times Square in NYC…

> If you're out in public, you agree to be seen.

True. Seen and enshrined in some (or more) peoples fleeting memory. Not captured for (nearly) all eternity and the whole world (who were not present at that exact moment and place) to see.

That is also the reason I oppose ubiquitous public surveillance. Even if it can only be seen by some amount of government actors.

I am glad, that I grew up in a time without constant photography or trackability. I am glad, that I an not totally recorded with every step I take in public and that only the people who walk by might have the chance to remember my face and me being there at that moment.

[Edit] formatting [/Edit]

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#15

Post by brudgers »

jMyles wrote: post #8

Reading into the details of these kinds of "privacy implications" (particularly the desire to force publication delay and the force blurring of people or license plates), I'm left thinking that the "implications" are more stark for freedom than they are for privacy . Are there really privacy implications of any sort in publishing a series of photos of people and cars on a street that aren't already implicated by the…

My impression based on the title of the blog site and the domain is that the author is in Australia. That doesn't change anything about who has and does not have access to original images. However, it does provide a different context for legal analysis.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#16

Post by jMyles »

Symbiote wrote: post #9
jMyles wrote: post #8

Reading into the details of these kinds of "privacy implications" (particularly the desire to force publication delay and the force blurring of people or license plates), I'm left thinking that the "implications" are more stark for freedom than they are for privacy . Are there really privacy implications of any sort in publishing a series of photos of people and cars on a street that aren't already implicated by the…

> We can opt either ... or Or, we can have a compromise, since the world isn't black and white, and we needn't restrict ourselves to a binary choice. That's how the European rights work, on life, expression (speech), privacy and so on.

With most things, I agree, but I'm not sure I see any middle ground here. Can you publish a picture taken in public, even if it includes faces and license plates, or not? This does seem binary to me.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#17

Post by moron4hire »

sdoering wrote: post #14
moron4hire wrote: post #12

Perhaps we could consider what is going on here to be something of a small-townification of cities. I grew up in a small town. If something was going on out from behind closed doors, everyone knew about it. And sometimes they knew even if it was behind closed doors. Prior to the current era of data ubiquity, to escape such a thing, you could find some level of anonymity in a crowd. Walking through Times Square in NYC…

> If you're out in public, you agree to be seen. True. Seen and enshrined in some (or more) peoples fleeting memory. Not captured for (nearly) all eternity and the whole world (who were not present at that exact moment and place) to see. That is also the reason I oppose ubiquitous public surveillance. Even if it can only be seen by some amount of government actors. I am glad, that I grew up in a time without constant…

That's not entirely true. Photographers have long had very broad rights about shooting in public [0]. If you're in a high-traffic area, it's fairly likely you could end up in someone's photo. You might be lost in the sea of people, but you'll probably also be lost in the sea of mass data collection.

My point is not that "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear". There is perhaps a corollary, "just who do you think you are that anyone would be interested in your life?" But even that is beside the point. The point is that you've never actually had this extremely broad version of a right to privacy that you think you had.

[0] http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#18

Post by cuu508 »

MarkEthan wrote: post #3

The lack of quality blurring is definitely something to prioritize. As an aside, OpenStreetView makes me think of the "gargoyles" in Snow Crash. As sensors of all types (but in this instance cameras) get radically cheaper & start to permeate the physical world it's inevitable that things visible from the street will just become less private over time.

And quality blurring may be tricky to implement. On Google Street View, street name plates and road signs are often blurred, because the algorithm is not sure if they are licence plates or not, and blurs too much. For Open Street View, this would defeat the purpose of having the photos.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#19

Post by moefogs »

jMyles wrote: post #8

Reading into the details of these kinds of "privacy implications" (particularly the desire to force publication delay and the force blurring of people or license plates), I'm left thinking that the "implications" are more stark for freedom than they are for privacy . Are there really privacy implications of any sort in publishing a series of photos of people and cars on a street that aren't already implicated by the…

1) It is naive, at best, to believe that the wholesale destruction of privacy for individuals will also mean the wholesale destruction of privacy for elites. This simply won't happen.

2) Privacy is not a binary state. The crux of your argument is that since I do not have privacy from the NSA, then I should not have privacy from any individuals. I don't mind if you want to give up yours, but I like mine. Please do not subject me to your tyranny.

3) Your Constitutional hand-wringing ignores a lot of reality, including (but not limited to) the fact that Constitutional law isn't as simple as you think it is, and that if your best argument is that people who never conceived of mass photography and image recognition didn't take a stand against it, well... that's silly.

4) Your conclusions are precisely backwards. If we start making the locations of all cars perfectly public, of all people public etc, we won't have more freedom. We'll have an inescapable tyranny.

This is not an easy problem to solve. But your proposed solution is only fine for people whose actions are neatly aligned with current and future cultural norms as well as the preferences of current and future elites. Cheap widespread surveillance (which will happen otherwise) will be absolutely devastating to enemies of the state, it will be horrible for "unusual" people generally, and it will be FANTASTIC for elites.

Re: Privacy Implications for OpenStreetView

#20

Post by xyzzy123 »

jMyles wrote: post #16
Symbiote wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can opt either ... or Or, we can have a compromise, since the world isn't black and white, and we needn't restrict ourselves to a binary choice. That's how the European rights work, on life, expression (speech), privacy and so on.

With most things, I agree, but I'm not sure I see any middle ground here. Can you publish a picture taken in public, even if it includes faces and license plates, or not? This does seem binary to me.

Big public projects can have policies which minimise negative externalities.

You can still privately publish any photo you like, within the bounds of the law.

There is lots of middle ground. "Legally you can, but morally, should you?"

Time series get interesting.

If it comes to actual law and courts, it's definitely context dependent. Intent matters a lot. Surf cam is more OK than "revenge cam" of ex's house. Yes that means humans ascribe morality to certain arrangements of bits (and how the bits are evaluated is affected by who they were created by, and why). No, publishing and freedom of speech are not absolute but depend on purpose and intent.

To put it another way, technically child pornography is just a time series of pictures right?

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