Calls to shut down Google's Streetview!?

[Saracen]

Without you providing any details much less any links to those reports, I guess I'm to take your word for it. But presumably you aren't talking about Streetview at all, and by 'published by Google' you mean 'on the internet, and indexed by Google'? Which is an entirely different topic.

Well, you presume wrong. It was about Streetview, and the source was the BBC. I don't have the link to hand, but it shouldn't be hard to find if you want it.

These examples are getting progressively more silly. I don't pretend to be a lawyer, but I'll guess that there have been specific laws forbidding photography at specific government or military sites for a long time. And just because someone is arrested by police officers armed or otherwise, doesn't make their actions 'wrong', or even illegal. Unless I've missed a memo, the courts still decide that.

In fact, a month or two ago legislation was passed outlawing photographing or filming a police officer on an 'anti-terrorist operation', effectively making photographing a police officer illegal in all circumstances, whatever they are doing at the time. Rodney King? Edit: Jean Charles De Menezes??????

This is insanely authoritarian legislation for a European country to introduce, a world away from banning photography on military bases. This is legislation that the UK shares with Zimbabwe, and few other places. Furthermore it's now common for the police to prominently photograph attendees at peaceful demonstrations and group meetings for the purpose of intimidating members of our 'free' society who are not suspected of any crime. People have photographed coming out of Friends of the Earth meetings. And needless to say this falls under the description of an 'anti-terror operation'...

So everyone in the UK - including battered women, mob witnesses, runaway canoeists and anyone else with particular reasons to remain anonymous - is already being surveilled by CCTV in the street, in offices and shops, basically everywhere, and can expect the Stasi to open a file on them if they so much as attend a residents' meeting opposing the expansion of a nearby airport. Right to Privacy, Association and Expression have all been seriously curtailed recently in concrete, real ways - and not by Google.

Unless you perhaps know something that Google's army of lawyers doesn't, Streetview is going to be perfectly legal even under our Kafkaesque legal system. It can't coherently be argued to encroach on anyone's privacy at all, or at least noone here has coherently argued this. So why have a problem with Streetview, and not all these other 'developments'? Why should anyone be concerned about Streetview at all?

The examples are not getting silly.

A statement was made that photography from a public place in the UK was perfectly legal. I pointed out, with a range of examples, that it sometimes is and sometimes isn't. Whether it is legal or not depends on a wide variety of factors, including what you photograph, and the circumstances under which you do it, as well as what you then do with the images.

It is also the case, as I pointed out, that Streetview publish pictures. That gives anyone that objects, including in this country, the option to take legal action in other countries where that publication might be illegal even if the taking of the picture in this country wasn't, because there are jurisdictions, such as the US, where that act of publication becomes the issue, not the act of taking the picture.

This is ALL because a sweeping statement was made about there being no legal grounds for removal because taking pictures from a public place is legal in the UK. Even if taking a picture is legal, and it isn't necessarily so, there could still be legal grounds for removal.

That's why I said, if you took what I said in context,

I'll say it again, taking a photo from public places is not necessarily legal. It's not necessarily illegal either, but it's certainly not necessarily legal.

As for whether the situation is Kafkaesque or not, I didn't express an opinion. I didn't express an opinion on whether I agreed with laws, either on taking of pictures in the UK or of publishing them anywhere ..... though in many cases I don't agree with them.

For those same reasons, though, comparisons between Streetview and CCTV are not relevant. Firstly, there's a difference between what the state allows itself to do, and what it allows you or I, or Google, to do. Secondly, CCTV pictures are not routinely published. And, in general, when they are published, you'll often see identifying features masked out. That will be either because the individual concerned has not given permission for the face to appear, or has refused permission, or that individual does not fall within legal reasons for using the image, where, for instance, they are incidental to the purpose of the usage.

....

Unless you perhaps know something that Google's army of lawyers doesn't, Streetview is going to be perfectly legal even under our Kafkaesque legal system. It can't coherently be argued to encroach on anyone's privacy at all, or at least noone here has coherently argued this.

By your own definition, just as police officers don't determine legality or criminality, nor do Google lawyers. That, as you rightly point out, is for courts.

However, if you seriously think that a couple of police officers testifying as you what you were doing when they arrested you isn't seriously prejudicial to the balance of whether you're guilty or not, then regardless of what the theoretical situation is, I'd suggest you're seriously naive. Testimony from police is certainly not an absolute guarantee of them being believed or necessarily even telling the truth, or of you being convicted, but based on experiences from relatives both in the police and in the judiciary, it goes a hell of a long way towards it. Do the police determine guilt? In theory, no, obviously not, because of the burden of proof, beyond reasonable doubt, presumption of innocence, etc. But in practice, it's often closer to it than most people are aware of, and certainly, closer than I'm comfortable with.