Google's Earth, or Is It Brin's World?

An InformationWeek post today by Thomas Claburn is entitled "Google Defuses Street View Privacy With User Photos". It's hard to think of a more misleading way to characterize the situation. Adding user-generated content cannot defuse any issues regarding the still available satellite or panoramic photos of people's homes, windows, front porches, pets and the like. Presenting that kind of content in a commercial setting, where it is detailed and the main subject of the photo, normally requires individual, signed photo releases. Google has managed to get around that, most recently in a flawed decision by a Pennsylvania court. You can get an idea of Google's view of physical privacy in general in their court brief, an excerpt of which was published by The Smoking Gun. Essentially, Google argues (a) that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy for your real property, unless you have taken extraordinary measures to protect it; (b) that the property in question can already be viewed from one perspective or another on publicly available web sites (such as that operated by the County Assessor's office); (c) that while Google photographers did briefly enter a private driveway to make the photograph, that driveway would ordinarily be accessed by many people, such as delivery persons and neighbors, and is not therefore "private" in the way needed to exclude photographs; and (d) that the defendants cannot reasonably claim to have suffered psychological harm from the publication of the photograph and did not take immediate steps to have it removed.

Personally, I think all these arguments are fallacious, because they all overlook two obvious and highly pertinent facts:

(1) Google set out deliberately, and without regard to the preferences of society as a whole or any individual on the planet, to take panaoramic "street view" photographs of every piece of real property in several major cities. This was an unprecedented and extremely ambitious venture, and cannot be compared to the casual, accidental or occasional intrusion by an individual photographer. That is not to say that an individual photographer who deliberately enters a private driveway to photograph someone's house is doing nothing wrong; but it is not comparable to the methodical nature of Google's "street view" program, which might be seen as deliberately and egregiously intrusive even if the wandering photo opportunist is not.

(2) Google's purpose in photographing private homes is purely commercial. Although Google self-righteously pontificates about its "mission" in the court statement ("to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"), the fact is that Google is a profit-making enterprise, and any ideological motives they may have has to take a back seat to the fact that they are publishing more and more content with the intention of making more and more money. No one asked them or designated them to carry out any "mission"; they do it in the hope of increasing advertising revenue, licensing fees and other sources of income. So when Google hires photographers to stop by your house and take panoramic pictures of it which they can post on the Internet, they are not acting as artists, journalists, casual snapshot takers or any other disinterested party. They are using your property to indirectly generate income for themselves, to which you are not entitled, though you are the owner of the property. They are not fulfilling any (alleged) security mission, as NASA or the Pentagon might be when they point their satellite at your block; if anything, they are providing potentially dangerous information which would otherwise be quite challenging for terrorists or rogue states to obtain. As I said, the deliberate commercial use of a detailed photograph in which your property is the main subject normally requires a signed photo release; but decisions like those of judge Amy Reynolds Hay of the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania have helped Google to evade that requirement.

Aside from that, it is just obvious, and should be to any court, that previous publication of unlicensed photos of you or your property is no justification whatsoever for another instance of that to take place. The County Assessors office may actually have no right, or legitimate official interest, in putting your property on display. All the same, if they do, that does not mean that Google's pursuit of profit is an equally legitimate interest in that regard.

Now, back to the latest news bite: Google has not "defused" any privacy concerns with its addition of user photographs, obtained through its Panoramio service. Google is just helping itself to a bunch of free content, assuming vanity will convince enough amateur photographers to turn themselves into an unpaid, worldwide, roaming Google staff. There is some suggestion that the privacy concerns Claburn thinks this will address are more along the lines of the Google photographers' off-color photos of people picking their noses or peeing in public than the photos of people's private property, but privacy is invaded when a compromising photo is published, regardless who the photographer is. Contrary to Claburn's view, Google is not somehow exonnerated, nor are the victims less entitled to redress, because a compromising photo is selected and presented rather than originally taken by Google.

In fact, rather than fix anything, the new idea only raises questions about Google's use of user-generated content in search results that are part of Google's regular commercial activity. Google's Terms of Service seem to make it clear that they do not own the content you upload (see paragraphs 9.4 and 11). But their TOS are strangely similar to those of Facebook, whose latest ethics fiasco has much to do with their entitlement to uploaded content. Facebook claims the right to make "derivative" use of your content, while Google is a bit more vague. Google says that you grant them an "irrevocable" license to distribute, copy and present the work; they suggest that some rights you grant them to some content may be revoked, but only as specified under unspecified "Additional Terms of those Services". They say you may "terminate your legal agreement with Google" by closing your account and writing to them, but not that this revokes their right to your content. Personally, I would be very wary of uploading any photo to Google that you might ever want to either use commercially, or keep private. The pix of you and your girlfriend or boyfriend by the Statue of Liberty may seem like just about the most innocuous thing to put on Panoramio. Well, think ahead my friend. That irrevocable display license you granted to Google may just bite you in the rear end someday when you no longer want that particular association exposed to everyone on the planet.

My own view is that Google's so-called "mission" is on a collision course with basic values we have always had, and it is mainly the naivete and glib attitude of a certain technobrat, IT-snob crowd that makes it seem as if the values have just dispappeared. how convenient for Google, not to mention several other privacy-invading profiteers from surveillance and information-sharing technology. It is reassuring that so far, practically every incursion they make into privacy rights gets some kind of pushback; but power, money, and the shallow acceptance of every new social networking opportunity are pushing even harder on the other side. Which means privacy is constantly losing ground, and often court battles. Well, this blogger at least is not going gentle into that good night.