Thoughts on Google Maps Street Level Photos and Privacy

Thu May 31 10:17:20 PDT 2007

         Thoughts on Google Maps Street Level Photos and Privacy

              http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000244.html

Greetings.  The New York Times noted today
( http://tinyurl.com/28zbde ) that Google Maps is now displaying
street level photos for some locations in some areas -- the list of
which is sure to be expanding rapidly.

I've been asked what I thought about the privacy implications of
this -- some people seem to be pretty upset.

I started noticing this feature on various Google Map searches
around here in L.A. some time ago.  It's certainly handy for getting
a feel for what an unfamiliar place looks like before heading on
over.

Given the static nature of the images, which currently are unlikely
to be updated very frequently, I do not see a big privacy risk at the
moment.  Real estate companies are constantly snapping photos of
houses in many areas for their databases -- though obviously these
are not public in the way Google Maps now is.  In my neck of L.A.,
I've seen film camera trucks bristling with lenses plowing up and
down the streets shooting movie backgrounds.

In general, such photography from a public point (street, sidewalk,
etc.) is legal -- though there are exceptions that can come into
play for purposeful harassment and in other special cases.

However, it is possible to imagine possible situations where this
feature of Google Maps could cause problems, and even potential
risks for Google, depending on how Google chooses to manage the
service.

So long as the images being used by Google Maps are from
authenticated sources and are relatively infrequently updated, the
privacy risks stay low for most locales.  This isn't to say that
various government agencies won't go berserk over particular images
in any case -- given the ease with which you can get hassled by police
these days for taking a photo of the local freeway overpass -- but by
and large that won't happen for shots of most locations, to be sure.

However if Google decided to allow users to submit their own more
frequently updated photos of locations, either for the official
Google Maps database or through public "mashups" that link such
photos to the mapping database, the situation becomes more
problematic.  Not only could much more frequently updated photos
cross the line into real privacy violations, but the risk of
photoshopped photos being submitted or used that show faked imagery
would seem a real possibility.  You can use your own imagination
about the range of ways in which such fakes could be manipulated to
attract attention, harass, or mislead.

Now, I have absolutely no indication that Google has any intention
of permitting such "self-submitted" location photos scenarios.  In
fact, Google does have a link with which you can report
"inappropriate" photos for possible removal, though if photos were
faked, figuring out what was really inappropriate in different
situations could get rather complex.  In any case, all I'm saying here
is that so long as Google Maps is using authentic photos on a
infrequent update interval, the privacy risks remain relatively low
in the vast majority of cases.

A bigger risk to the service might loom in the future though.  I
can't count the number of times I've gotten queries from people that
amount to: "My neighbor has a camera pointed at my house -- who can
I report him to?  I feel like my children are at risk," etc.  In
almost all of these cases, my response is that so long as someone is
taking photos from public spaces or their own property, and isn't
making a special effort to see things they couldn't otherwise
normally see, such photography or video is usually permitted.  That
answer seems to infuriate many people.

This seems to suggest -- given the post-9/11 mentality -- that it is
not impossible to imagine laws that could be written specifically to
restrict the use of such street level photos, ostensibly on personal
security and privacy grounds.  If Google Maps were painted as a
major privacy problem -- which again is an opinion I don't subscribe
to, but that some others already do -- this could act as a catalyst
toward the enactment of such legislation.  This would be very
unfortunate in the absence of genuine, major privacy concerns of a
sort that do not currently exist in the Google Maps context, and
that might not ever exist there if Google and its competitors use
due care.

I only bring up this sort of possibility as did the "Ghost of
Christmas Yet to Come" -- not as something that Will Be, but as
something that Might Be -- a cautionary thought experiment, as it
were.

So, bottom line -- for now the Google Maps street level photos
provide a useful service and should not raise significant privacy
concerns, except for a tiny percentage of photos that can be easily
expunged.  Whether this benign situation will remain the case
depends upon Google's decisions regarding the service moving forward.

Allen Funt would probably be amused, anyway.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren at vortex.com or lauren at pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
   - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Founder, CIFIP
   - California Initiative For Internet Privacy - http://www.cifip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com

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