Cops slap ticket on Street View spycar You'll enjoy this: Here's evidence that not even the might of Google permits it to park vehicles from its Orwellian Opel spycar fleet in reserved doctor spots: Police dine Street View car for parking in reserved doctor spot Good work there by a vigilant Adam Ranshaw, and indeed the Boys in Blue, who apparently slapped the …
If you're interested in finding the resulting Street View imaging of those kids on that bike from the video, keep checking:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=chalfont+close,+cambridge&sll=51.537087,-0.912882&sspn=0.009663,0.02738&ie=UTF8&ll=52.188419,0.172847&spn=0.000595,0.001711&t=h&z=20
Oh, and Simon: stop drinking so much coffee! Or get an anti-shake cam. ;)
Yeah, cos taking snapshots in public is so, well, evil (if you're a can't think for yourself, Daily Wail reader). /sarcasm off.
I for one object to people exercising their rights being described as Orwellian. If you want to stir up some aggression, direct it at the spy cameras that really do monitor peoples lives in an instrusive way. They're the ones that should be destroyed if we are ever to return to the Britain our grandparents died for, rather than continuing the march towards the police states of Russia/China/Amerika.
Voting for Cameron won't make any difference on this subject either.
The third picture, purporting to depict a scene from contemporary Mars, is an obvious photoshopping mashup or whatever the current phrase for a digital collage is today.
The Phoenix lander would be covered in dust kicked up by it's retro rockets, yet here they are as clean as if someone had been at it with the Pledge only two minutes ago!
Not only that, everyone (with the possible exception of the Wikipedia author/s who wrote the Phoenix article) knows that "Green Valley, Mars" is filled with grass lawns, gazebos, brass bands, "victorian" style houses and crowds of Idahoans just waiting for evening when they will do something terrible to the google crew. This place looks like the Mojave Desert shot through a sepia filter. Could it be more fake?
The Google van is obviously in the Utopia Planitia and Google have scrambled a crack team to "fake it" in order to save face.
When that nice Mr Bush's space marines go there to claim Mars as the 51st state, the truth will come out of course.
I'd say that the photo shows an officer wasting police time. These Opel's are all registered in Europe; AFAIK the Met has no feasible way of enforcing the ticket when the car is registered outside the UK. I imagine this ticket will go unpaid, like the vast majority of London parking tickets.
Given that Google's close-up-and-personal shots could be used by terrorists without raising a sweat, why do the police harass amateur photographers, and professional photographers, while allowing these spycams from Google to roam freely, unless they park illegally?
Actually, I don't worry about terrorists using Google's stuff, but it's the double-standard that irritates.
There's nothing Orwellian about Google and StreetView. In the context of surveillance, I would define Orwellian as, "The arbitrary monitoring of individual citizens by a state." (I tend to view pretty much all monitoring of individuals by a state as arbitrary, and therefore Orwellian, but some might legitimately argue that there are cases where a state should be monitoring individuals.)
Google is:
- not a state
- not monitoring individuals
Further, a state engaging in Orwellian surveillance would focus on collecting private information and would not share any of the collected data with the general public. The telescreens were in personal living spaces, remember? Or has no one at El Reg read the book?
Google is not collecting any private data (there's nothing less private than the public street, the timeless cliché for "a palce that is not private") and is sharing the collected data with the public. Indeed, the data is intended for the public. They are providing the world with virtual strolls down streets that one could see in person, where time and resources not limiting factors.
So, Limeys, please stop your griping and put your upper lip back in the posture we've been told to expect from it.
Couldn't councils impose a Google tax on this sort of thing? I mean lots of what they're filming is paid for by local councils (roads, traffic signs, parks, public buildings, etc.) and I'm sure local taxpayers wouldn't mind a small reduction in their council tax by way of payment for having themselves and their property feature in a money-making scheme for Google.
Since Goooogle has oooodles of cash, I'm sure councils would be instantly attracted to the idea (they usually have a mafia-like nose for other people's money, so I'm a little surprised they haven't thought of it already). With luck they might then be able to stop milking the rest of the motoring public as much as they do.
Not sure what the legal basis might be, but maybe you need a licence from someone for conducting a survey? Or perhaps a special parking rate could be introduced for cars with cameras attached? Or a congestion charge of some sort? Councils have lots of powers these days, so I'm sure they could come up with something. I'd have thought that ten grand a day per car would be a reasonable fee.
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I shopped a copper the other day for parking on double yellow lines while he nipped into a convenience store.
After speaking to the assistant chief constable I was assured that all officers would be reminded of the importance of them being seen to obey the rules they are so keen to enforce.
I know of at least one instance of this being done... although the virtual world is not exactly public (yet).
The project involves the true duplication of some real life structures into a virtual world, and the street view pictures are being used as a quick and dirty method of modeling the nearby structures (to provide a visually effective backdrop - and it is very effective).
The effort needed to implement this is also quite minimal.
"Definate proof of Google taking pictures of children, where's the police when you need them?"
contery to popular belief, it is NOT against the law to take photographs in a public place, even if that picture does contain children.
it is also not against the law to take photos of gov. buildings, so long as you are on public property.
mines the one that's not been spotted yet
WTF! The handicapped parking here in the US is already bad enough but you guys have sunk to a new low with that one.
At least it gives those cameras on every street corning something to watch. "Hey, you there! Yeah, the bloke who just got out of the car parked in the DOCTOR spot. Hold up your General Practitioner license to the camera! What, no license!?!? Stand there and wait while we send someone to write you up."
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