German court calls Google aerial imagery 'spying'

retrac

Unless I'm mistaken about 20 years ago Germany was the first country that required that Google blur people's faces and licence plates on Gmap's Street View. There was initially much opprobrium about this limitation on free expression. And many technical objections to the scale of the task of identifying all the people and blurring were raised. These technical issues were overcome. It would seem we now accept the anonymity blurring as both not only necessary but an obviously good idea. Edit: It was 2009. https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/nearly-3-percent-of-ger... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-11595495

AlotOfReading

I don't have any evidence, but I suspect the number of criminals that rely on aerial imagery to plan heists is negligible. On the other hand, I think most people would deeply regret if universities couldn't monitor foliage for land use/climate studies, archaeologists had to traipse through their land digging holes to do surveys, and local governments couldn't provide a whole range of basic services that depend on commercial imagery services. This is an awful ruling.

kingforaday

Hmm interesting. Are they saying the general accessibility of the platform is what shouldn't be allowed or the photograph itself? > The judges also determined Google must provide property owners with advance notice when an area is photographed. But Google's satellite imagery is from a blend of providers like Vantor WorldView, GeoEye, Landsat, etc so....

firesteelrain

Why Google? There are many mapping services

userbinator

The US definitely has much more detailed aerial photographs already. Good luck suing the US government. I wonder if we're going to get a Streisand Effect this time. Maybe we'll end up with the amusing situation of Google blocking only Germans from seeing their own country, while everyone else still can.

freefaler

I am more worried on using my Gemini (and other LLM chat providers) sessions to build my profile and sell it to data brokers. And I'm much more worried if the government forces these providers to share my data so they can enforce automatically and cheaply the next "save the children" law, which is mostly "no tax sheep left unharvested" law. (after a short research your LLM usage is currently used to build your profile)

ulfw

Germany has been a weird country for so long. Haven't lived there in decades and can't see myself fit in at all anymore