Peugeot compo cam aids amateur espionage

Car company Peugeot has a competition on its website, in which you have to find hidden 3008s. It features some astonishing panoramic shots of London, taken sometime last summer, from the top of CentrePoint. You can zoom in, and if you go full screen, it’s pretty impressive. Here’s an overview: Peugeot cam One thing that …

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference between systematic and one-off

Google are publishing a huge number of images in one place, indexed by location. That's a bit different from publishing just a few images, however big and detailed they are. For comparison, newspapers and magazines don't systematically blur faces and numberplates when they publish a photograph of a crowd or street scene.

Incidentally, a while ago the TV happened to be on showing one of those crime/accident reality-type programmes and I noticed that the camera lingered over the numberplate of a red Ford that had been involved in a crime/accident. I happened to have a browser open so I typed the number into some second-hand/car insurance web site, and the correct description was displayed. Strange. Not being bothered to blur out the number I can understand, but in this case there was really no need, that I could see, for including the close-up shot of the numberplate.

[Cazzo Enorme]

Talking of spying ...

... I now know you bank with First Direct, like shopping at John Lewis and print a lot of your own T-Shirt designs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't think this account name should be allowed.

Look up the meaning of "cazzo".

[Nigel Whitfield.]

They are also ...

... purveyors of finest Germanic Pornography to gentleman with an interest in musical theatre and working out.

[Cazzo Enorme]

Re: I still don't think this account name should be allowed.

My Italian wife was quite openly referred to as "Tette Enorme" by a colleague at one of her previous jobs. This was an office environment, and no offence was taken (there again, she really does have large knockers). After telling me this story I asked jokingly whether that would make me "Cazzo Enorme". Hence the account name.

Meanwhile, you might want to look up a certain Dr Stronzo Bestiale. He was credited as co-author on a scientific paper, and subsequently included in the citations of a number of other papers. I think you'll find that the real authors of the original paper (Australian I think) have a similar sense of humour and familiarity with Italian slang as I do. (Stronzo Bestiale is a coarse term for a particularly smelly poo).

[Blubster]

I still don't think this account name should be allowed

Depends if he really has a big dick - if so, he's entitled to boast about it.

[EddieD]

Ah well, that's this afternoon over...

Far more fun to play spot the candid shot than configure a new bunch of laptops....

7 and counting....

[Andrew Yeomans]

Also try looking on this one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13200114

[Bilgepipe]

Privacy

"The Age of Privacy is Dead."

~Mark Zuckerberg.

[K. Adams]

Peugeot's Panopticon?

Peugopticon?

Peugeonopticon?

Panopteugeot?

[DJV]

OMG - woman with no legs!

Pan left and down until you see a disgusting looking building covered with lime green, yellow and orange. Next zoom in to the left of the building and onto the bus coming towards you. On the pavement just in front of the bus is a woman in a pink jacket who appears to have no legs and is floating above the pavement! Fantastic!

Who cares about some shitty French car, Iooking for the bad photo joins is much more fun!

[Nigel Whitfield.]

Ah yes...

She's just opposite the old Morgan Computers shop. There's a woman duplicated on Charing Cross Road, outside Foyles, and another lady near Holborn who's had her feet stolen (both pictured on my blog).

We did come across some alarming leopard skin print curtains, but there are limits to what we can show on a family website.

[lurker]

Some blurring

There are some blurred faces, whereas other can be seen quite clearly. The ones I've just come across are two young lads sitting on some steps. Their faces are clearly blurred out streetview-style, but everyone around them remains unaffected, strange. Possibly blurred on request?

[thefutureboy]

Blur

They have blurred the faces of all kids but not the adults.

I assume this is to protect kids who may have removed from abusive families and taken to safer places to live.

[John Sturdy]

Possibly not blurred?

Perhaps they really look like that -- it was something they'd been smoking.

[Justin Clements]

yawn

I have never worked out why number plates need covering.

They even do it on car transporters these days of crash damaged cars? Why? To protect the individual? Do me a favour.

[John Robson]

NP blurring

is automated, so of course it will happen to car transporters...

[Jim 59]

Panrific !

Lots of pretty girls in London.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Panrific

Yes, but 90% of the people in London are foreigners, so you'll have to practise you're chat up lines in 37 languages.

Although I can recommend Polish as a good start.

[Ian Ferguson]

More

I can see a building site where one of the chappies on the roof isn't wearing a hard hat. Easy to identify.

To be honest though, not many people in it would REALLY care. Much like Google Streetview - that finds the occasional nutters because of the vast areas they cover.

[Graham Marsden]

SECURITY!

Don't Peugeot know that Al Qaeda will be using this to plan attacks!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like these things

It lets you look at a snap shot in life, it all loses something when things start getting blurred and it's far more interesting looking at something that isn't staged and it isn't as if I don't see the same things whilst I'm walking around the city, though I'll never see the exact moment captured by this camera, and I'd never see the same moment twice that I see whilst walking around.

When I see snapshots like this I get to thinking "what's the person thinking about, what were they doing earlier, are they happy" and so on, I wonder this when walking around on occasion and I do when looking at these kinds of images.

It's kind of hard to feel any interest in something with a blob for a head.

Really we do all need to learn that paranoia is bad for us.

[Anonymous Coward]

No truly racy candid shots yet, but...

Rose Morris Guitars, 8 Denmark Street has some nice views! It has a lovely small terrace garden and the top floor just below it has a couple of indoor-dressed gorgeous girls plainly visible through the open windows. In the panaroma it is the first terrace garden in a straight line from the second "0" of the panaroma label "London, Summer 2010 - Panoramic Photography by Jeffrey Martin".

Amazing what you can do with an 18 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor Canon 550D SLR with 400mm lens and a lot of time!

[Reality Dysfunction]

they did this at the wrong time of day....

at 25 bedford av in camden you can see a big glass box on the roof with someones unoverlooked bathtub in it...

the things you find looking for cars on roofs...............

[Anonymous Coward]

@Justin Clements

@Justin Clements

If your car is on a trailer or transporter you should always cover the plates... Unless you want to chance getting a ticket in addition to any the transporter driver may get. In addition, cars on trailers are unlikely to have tax/insurance etc and don't need it. Unfortunately, ANPR is unaware of such a minor thing as the law and the driver could find himself being pulled over every 5 mins.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

@yawn

Cos somebody could copy your number plate if they have a car the same make and model - eg to get around the congestion charge. Of course they could also just make one up or copy one from the local tesco carpark.

What really happens is that there was a meeting where some HR minion hadn't said much and so desperate to sound important came up with the idea; "shouldn't we disguise number plates, for security reasons". Everybody else wanted to go home so said - yeah, fine, whatever.

And somehow this became corporate policy - then big corp company thought, if they are doing it then we had better do it at aswell, then everybody else decided that if big corp are doing it then we must. Then it became that the industry standard was to blur number plates you would be negligent for not doing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Queue Jasper Carrott

Its Okay sarge... I've got the number... the chasis number!

[Pete 6]

Bah!

19/20... Where are you #20?!

[John Sturdy]

The PCSOs are getting slack

I think I spotted a building that was mentioned in a register article, when some security staff got shirty about someone photographing the building, and called the PCSOs who got shirty too.

So how come they haven't been round and arrested Peugeot and forced them to delete the pictures?

[Z80]

Found 14 pugs so far

There's some rather M.C. Escher-esque joining going on in the area running from directly beneath the camera in a ~South by west direction outwards to the back of the Foyles.book shop.

The woman in Denmark Street looking back at her top half floating a few metres down the street is also worth a look.

[randomHandle]

Transparent bathroom!

How about this stunning rooftop house complete with transparent bathroom.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/captureim.jpg/

If I'm not mistaken there is water in the bath but no bathing beauty, shame.