Forum Moderators: goodroi
The Pentagon banned the Internet giant's digital-mapping vehicles from all military installations after detailed photographs of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio appeared on Google Maps."We don't have any issues regarding Google and their products, which are very useful tools," Ross said. "But the Street View provides clear imagery of control points, barriers, headquarters and security facilities that pose a risk to our force-protection efforts."
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., said it erred in collecting the information from the base and has since complied with the military's request to take down the images.
Google Removes Street Views Of Military Instalations [latimes.com]
Now, I'm a HUGE fan of Google too, just like the government but if I've got a privacy fence around my property, pool, barn, whatever and I've got things there that I don't want seen, what right does Google or anyone else have to take aerial photograph's of what might be inside my privacy fence.
Would that not be an invasion of privacy on my real property? I'm not saying this is the case in point, but just suppose.
Scenario:
You have a 20 foot concrete wall enclosing an area on your property so that no one at ground level could see what's behind the wall. This wall was built for SECURITY/PRIVACY. Inside said wall is housed 20 or 30 High End Luxury Vehicles that you wanted to keep out of public view because of risk of vandalism, theft, etc. Would you want an aerial photograph shown to the world depicting what may be behind said wall?
This presumes that, in fact, my professor was and still is correct.
But I'm not a lawyer. :)
A message sent to all Defense Department bases and installations around the country late last week told officials to not allow the popular mapping Web site from taking panoramic views inside the facilities.
Apparently making money and having a complete map is more important than national security & why the *()*(*& would the DoD let Google take pictures inside the facilities?
Military bases are a slightly special case, though. I'd like to know how they got permission in the first place to go around photographing an entire army base.
Your argument breaks down, because, if you truly want to protect the luxury vehicles, you need to build a ROOF over them.
I'd imagine there is actually some case law on this involving people who earn their living by taking celebrity pictures from the street, from helicopters, etc. Privacy laws would be different for a celebrity, but not property laws.
One other legal wrinkle is using photos of property for gain. I recall a suit brought by some guy whose house appeared in an ad photo without his permission.
One thing I'm curious about is whether private property owners can request removal. I stayed at a hotel in a major city and was surprised that any image of the hotel in the street view appeared to be blurred out. (If you saw the hotel, you could understand why that wouldn't hurt their marketing effort.:)) At first I thought it might have been bad timing involving a passing truck, but then I began to wonder...
But I will challenge jomaxx and Hugene to say that with this wall there is a certain amount of "expected privacy", No?
One thing I'm curious about is whether private property owners can request removal.
If they allow webmaster's to do a URL removal request, why couldn't they do a "Don't Map Me Bro" request?
FWIW, there's been at least one other widespread implementation of this already. It was A9.com, owned by Amazon.com. As far as I can tell they abandoned this part of their business, although I suppose it's possible they sold the technology and/or their photograph database to Google.
WAIT Fort Campbell, KY is the nearest base to me. Somebody, please help me out here but can you not see the streets, etc. if you zoom in using satellite on Google maps? Try it. Switch back and forth between Maps and Satellite. One is greyed out, the other is clear as a bell. "Expected Privacy".
;)
Don't run off so fast, Propools! With this post, you'll only represent half the posts in the thread - and your "blog" seems to just be starting to roll! Besides, do you really want to go and shovel snow? ;)
> What about military installations of other countries?
Street Views is currently only available for select cities in America. Potentially being in breach of Canadian privacy laws has prevented Canadian cities from appearing on the service. Similarily, laws in some European countries could prevent Street Views from ever being used there.
Some nations have requested the removal or blurring of their military bases, or other sensitive areas from Google Maps. Israel springs to mind. Can you even imagine the military of any country consenting to an American commercial venture coming through and extensively photographing their secure facilities? Shoot, I was shocked that they could get away with that in The States, given the security climate! (Although, to be fair, entering the base was a violation of Google's policy to not photograph private roads & facilities where the public has no access.)
Why two threads on the same subject?
Don't Map Me Bro
I laughed out loud reading this one
... what a cool blog this thread is... *heh*
I was wondering how they could make it less intrusive so other countries wouldn't ban their minivans up front. Perhaps if it was opt-IN.
- Operator? I'd like to call a Google van. Yes, this is the new secret NATO rocket base in Poland. Yes. Yes we're open 24hrs. Thanks. Bye.
Or... like 'family frost' in Europe or the preacher/political campaign/toilet paper exchange vans in Japan they could be playing some kind of a melody or have speakers on... giving you time to... uhm... hide.
if the gov. shouldn't have just gotten some great big <NOINDEX> signs
This shouldn't be the privilege of the government only. Perhaps this would be the right time to advertise the new offline web cloaking device: the NOINDEX NOCACHE NOARCHIVE neon sign [tilt varies between 0 to 90 degrees based on which Google spy-network is aiming its cameras at you].
Or alternatively the budget version, cut these words into your lawn.
...
If I was the US Military, I'd say 'ok, you can map us, but then promise to map the [insert terror network name] bases as well okay? In fact map THEM first! See you!'
...
You gotta love Google.
They see no evil [en.wikipedia.org]
Sometimes there is a fourth monkey depicted with the three others; the last one, Shizaru, symbolizes the principle of "do no evil".
oh...kay. 2 out of 4. Could replace the Google logo sometime soon.
Not sure who the more irresponsible party is, the govt or Google..... Apparently making money and having a complete map is more important than national security & why the *()*(*& would the DoD let Google take pictures inside the facilities?
There was a little irresponsibility on both sides. Google's mapping team isn't supposed to request access to private roads, government/military installations, or other secure areas. Apparently, a Google "mapper" broke policy in the Fort Sam Houston case. Also, security personnel at Fort Sam should've conducted a better investigation before allowing the map team on base.
From jomaxx:
I'd like to know how they got permission in the first place to go around photographing an entire army base.
That's the thing. The Department of Defense never explicitly gave Google permission to map its installations.
There are several Army installations (such as Fort Sam Houston) where visitors are allowed. Those visitors and their vehicles are thoroughly checked at the gate, but they are often granted entrance as long as they don't possess weapons... (ie. to attend functions, shows, military museums, etc.). Other installations that directly support national security or national interests... (such as Fort Knox or Redstone Arsenal) ... are restricted in several ways.
The Google mapping team would've had plenty of issues trying to enter those installations.
