Google starts to blur faces in StreetView Maps
After privacy complaints, Google Inc. is beginning to automatically blur faces of people captured in the street photos taken for its Internet map program. Rolling it out will take several months, however. Although Google’s Street View service was not the first to augment online maps with photos, the detail and breadth of images on the site surprised and unsettled many users when it launched last year. As specially equipped Google vehicles cruised city streets snapping panoramic images of homes and businesses, the resulting photos revealed people falling off bikes, exiting strip joints, crossing the street, sunbathing — everyday, in-public things but nonetheless, things they might not have wanted preserved for posterity.
Some privacy advocates, including the influential Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested that Google blur the images of people. That move, the critics pointed out, would not inhibit Street View’s goal of helping people become familiar with the look and feel of a location before they travel there. This week, Google revealed it had indeed begun deploying a facial-recognition algorithm that scans photos for mugs to blur. The changes are happening first in scenes in New York, before slowly expanding to the other 40 cities in Street View. Google spokesman Larry Yu said the company is still tweaking the system. For now it tends to err on the side of blurring too many things — things a computer erroneously interprets as faces — but that is better than leaving too many faces unblurred, Yu said.
Source: AP
Finally a pro-privacy move by google…
yesterday, during my morning bicycle trip, i saw a google car. i raced to follow it for a few street, hopefully i ll see myself on google earth hehe
where can i see these google images?
Google Maps.
you need to use google earth or google maps
I knew something like this would happen after that dude was photographed buying drugs from a blacked out car. Remember that?
Like [url=http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&hl=en&q=&layer=c&cbll=41.466608,-81.745762&cbp=1,52.45933445588389,,0,1.7434971393323497&ll=41.4673,-81.745352&spn=0.007099,0.007349&z=17]this[/url] guy, falling from his bike. Press the arrow with the N to view the next frame.
Hahaha, nice find Xenu. Look at his legs, I bet that hurt.
and they are blurring horse faces to check this link out
******************
http://www.newlaunches.com/entry_images/0508/14/google.jpg
full story
http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/google_takes_privacy_very_seriously_for_humans_and_horses_as_well.php
“but that is better than leaving too many faces unblurred, Yu said.”
What, like preserving someone’s universal right to free speech is better than turning them over to the chinese government?
can anyone tell me how this google map street view works? so good quality and so near and from every angle?!?
someone explain please.
thanks you.
Well how do you think, they drive cars around taking 360 pictures.
Wish people would stop stalling the progress of technological advancement by whining.
they are really doing this for the privacy of the politicians leaving brothels. and the high level individuals that have been caught in a comprimising moment. true you will find ppl buying drugs and hookers turning trix, and also the comedy of humanity.
I am quite happy about the face blurring because a Google car did take a shot of me and my boyfriend walking down the street here in NYC, and if my wife were to somehow stumble across it, she would be very upset.
this guys blog is based on google street view sightings.
http://mashable.com/2007/05/31/top-15-google-street-view-sightings/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE
ROFL!
this is a youtube of google street view. f-ing hilarious!
When are they going to bring this s*it to the UK?
I can’t wait to see random people getting happy slapped.
@ Flexo
The reason why they don’t have this in the UK is because all of the Google cars that are using for imaging have their steering wheels on the left side of the car.
So they can’t be used in the UK. Sorry
as google appears to be the right hand of “big brother” one could imagine a special dispensation for driving normal cars on the bizzaro UK roads.
(btw, we dont yet know what big brother’s left hand is doing, but it does smell funny.)
I definitely agree with Noir (13). It’s an elite as hell feature, that I should have used when I was trying to find Planned Parenthood for the first time, but instead was 30 min. late for my appointment. I don’t want any blurring.
Why not be proud of what you do instead of trying to censor the internet?
@7 nixe