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Germans Opt Out Of Google StreetView
Google’s StreetView online mapping service suffered a set-back after around 250,000 German households opted out of its service.Ever since Google started taking photos for its StreetView service in Germany, citizens concerned about their privacy were given the option to opt out of the service.
The Germans were at first to be able to opt out of the service by writing a letter to Google. This method was replaced by an online webform, which people could fill in to have their homes and places of business blurred from the service.
The search engine giant said in a blog post: “Out of a total of 8,458,084 households we received 244,237 opt-outs, which equals 2.89 per cent of households. Two out of three opt-outs came through our online tool.”
The company has warned that some of the houses that have been asked to be blurred will remain as they are when the service launches in a few weeks time, owing the massive scale of the system.
Users wishing to have their faces, license plates or houses blurred could do so by clicking on the ‘report a problem’ button.
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Google Faces Spanish Probe Over Street View
Google has been ordered to appear in Spanish courts this October as a part of a government’ investigation into determining if the information collected by Google for its Street View service was illegal.According to the New York Times, the court summons, issued by Judge Raquel Fernandino, were a part of a lawsuit filed by a Spanish internet users association after Google announced it had ‘mistakenly’ collected payload data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks from cities around the world.
Since Google’s controversial announcement, a number of countries have launched criminal investigations against Google to determine whether privacy laws had been broken.
A Google spokesperson in Spain has said that the company will give full cooperation to the judge for resolving the issue.
The spokesperson added: “We are dedicating a lot of our time to finding a solution so that users can be at ease.”
Recently, the UK’s ICO has determined that the data collected by Google can’t be used to reveal the identity of the users, and so was not harmful to the public. This prompted the company to resume deploying Street View cars on UK roads once again.
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Google Street View ‘Dead Body’ Mystery Solved
An image on Google Street View of a girl lying on the pavement has created furore among the residents of Worcester.Concerned Residents of Middle Road, St. John’s in Worcester contacted Google to ensure that the company had not captured an image of a dead girl whilst taking pictures for its Street View project, the Telegraph has reported.
The image, taken by Google in summer 2009, has turned out to be a prank played by a nine year old girl who was playing at the time she was captured by the camera.
A resident, whose daughter was also playing with the girl in that picture, has said that although everyone is relieved that it was just a prank by a child, Google did not bother to inform the police of the image. She believes that Google should have told the police as people did not know whether it was a joke or a dead body.
“Sometimes our cars inadvertently capture odd or inappropriate moments as they drive past. This is why we have put in place tools so that if people see what they believe to be inappropriate, they can report them to us,” said a spokesman for Google.
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Software Removes Pedestrians From Google Street View Images
Pedestrians can be removed from images on Google Street View thanks to a new program developed by a graduate student at the University of California.The still unnamed computer program replaces photographs of people captured by the Street View cameras and replaces them with pixel representations of background buildings, foliage and pavement.
The program is said to be still in the experimental stage, and so struggles to replace images that don’t have a flat background.
The newly developed technique is expected to become an important tool to protect user privacy in the future.
Since the start of Google’s Street View project, people have continually raised concerns over their privacy as images have been captured of people unwilling to have their picture broadcast publicly across the globe.
Google, prior to uploading the photos, takes care in blurring peoples’ faces and car license plate numbers, but privacy activists claim that some people are identifiable from their clothes, the way they walk, their height, their figure and the location they are photographed in.
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Google Not Planning To Use Drones Yet
Search giant Google has said that it won’t be using drones anytime soon to generate much detailed photos for its Street view and maps online services.The fact that a Google executive who has an interest in robots purchased one of these flying drones was enough to fuel rumour mills.
Not surprisingly, the owner of the business who sold the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to Google added to the publicity by suggesting that the drones are “well suited to deliver up to date image material for Google Maps”.
In the hindsight, it would have been ludicrously silly for Google to have thought of such an idea in the first place; there have been rumours in the past about Google deploying balloons for the same purpose, rumours that turned out to be unfounded.
A spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority confirmed to PC Pro that Google would require authorisation from the UK aviation body in order to operate any unmanned drones in the country’s airspace.
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Google Street View Plans Slammed By German Watchdog
Google is facing fresh criticism from privacy regulators in Germany over its plans to launch the Street View service in the country.
News agency Bloomberg reports that, on Tuesday, Google announced the deadline of the first launch of its controversial Street View service in Germany.
“This surprised me very much. The quick introduction of the objection tool and the decision to start it during the summer holidays create doubts about Google’s interests in a simple and user-friendly implementation,” said Johannes Caspar, a regulator of Hamburg’s data protection authority.
According to a blogpost by Peter Schaar, federal commissioner of Germany’s Data Protection authority, the authority will ensure that all complaints regarding the Street View service are answered and dealt with before it is launched in the country.
The company had stated that the new feature will be available across German cities by the end of this year.
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Software Removes Pedestrians From Google Street View Images
Pedestrians can be removed from images on Google Street View thanks to a new program developed by a graduate student at the University of California.The still unnamed computer program replaces photographs of people captured by the Street View cameras and replaces them with pixel representations of background buildings, foliage and pavement.
The program is said to be still in the experimental stage, and so struggles to replace images that don’t have a flat background.
The newly developed technique is expected to become an important tool to protect user privacy in the future.
Since the start of Google’s Street View project, people have continually raised concerns over their privacy as images have been captured of people unwilling to have their picture broadcast publicly across the globe.
Google, prior to uploading the photos, takes care in blurring peoples’ faces and car license plate numbers, but privacy activists claim that some people are identifiable from their clothes, the way they walk, their height, their figure and the location they are photographed in.
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Hack Uses Google Street View To Locate Victims
A security expert has devised a method which can pin-point the exact location of a person’s home to attackers by accessing location data from Google’s Street View service, BBC Newsreported on Tuesday.The exploit, devised by hacker Samy Kamkar, discovers the location details by interrogating their network router to reveal an important identification number. This number can then be used alongside readily available internet tools to find out the location of the router within a few hundred feet.
Kamkar said that the process works because it is made to appear that the request for information is coming from the user’s computer instead of from the internet.
Speaking at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Kamkar said: “Their web browser is compelling this exploit for you. Pretty cool.”
He gathered the data, known as a MAC address, and used it along with the geo-location feature used in Google’s Street View service on the Firefox web browser to associate the revealed address with the GPS data to locate the router.
He said: “This is geo-location gone terrible. Privacy is dead people. I’m sorry.”
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37 States Join Google Street View Probe
The Attorney-General of Connecticut has said that 37 states have joined the probe he launched into the collection of Wi-Fi data by Google Street View cars, the Wall Street Journal reported today.The investigation will look into whether privacy laws were broken when Google collected personal data from unsecured wireless networks in the course of taking pictures for its Street View service.
The team of 38 members, led by Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal, has sent a letter to Google asking the company to provide information on how the Street View software system stores its data.
Blumenthal has also asked Google to test its software, and to explain how the unauthorised data is had been used by the company.
“We are asking Google to identify specific individuals responsible for the snooping code and how Google was unaware that this code allowed the Street View cars to collect data broadcast over Wi-Fi networks,” said Blumenthal.
Although Google has publicly apologised for its mistake and promised to work with regulators and governments of various countries to sort out the issue, the company continues to face allegations from around the world.
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Google Street View Criticised Because Of SAS Photos
Google has been lambasted for allowing its Street View service to publish pictures of the secretive SAS (Special Air Service) headquarters in Credenhill in Herefordshire which had never been photographed officially before.
Security experts say that terrorists could potentially use the pictures to plan for attacks on the base especially as Street View shows a full 180-degree panoramic view of the HQ’s boundary and has been taken within the last six months.
The search giant has promised that Street View will not show licence plates and faces. An MoD spokesperson told the Sun that they never confirm where their special forces are based.
Laura Scott from Google has confirmed that Google only takes pictures from public roads and that the base was not hidden away from public view. She also confirmed that the images would not be taken off the site.
Google said previously that “One in five people already use Google Street View for house hunting and the scheme has previously launched in 20 countries without any breach of security issues”.
Ironically, anyone can ask Google to remove pictures if it violates their personal privacy. Furthermore, it did remove some pictures of 10, Downing Street, the home address of the British Prime minister that it considered to be too sensitive.
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