Woman nails 'cheating boyf' on Russian 'Street View' A Russian woman has ditched her boyfriend of five years after spotting him with another squeeze on the local equivalent of Street View. Marina Voinova, 24, said she was searching Yandex Maps for an address in Perm when she got an eyeful of her other half, named only as "Sasha", on an incriminating stroll (click for a bigger …
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Not against the law to display people on the street in the UK either, so why do they bother bluring them!! The only cavet I would say is drop the bloody height of the Google Cameras to that of a person walking, otherwise your basically peeking over peoples fences, which is what does annoy me!
Here's some news for you, looking over fences isn't against the law either.
You may be able to object on a particular law, but not contradict yourself on the circumstances it's applied - it's the same law. You are either for it, against it, or don't care - pick one.
It's not that simple. It is about "expectation of privacy". If you look over someone's fence as you walk or drive past - fair enough. If you put up a ladder to have a look over someone's fence, the situation is different. The issue with Google's Streetview is that their cameras are at a height considerably higher than that of a person walking along a street.
Not true either. You can take photographs of almost anything which is visible from a public area or highway in the UK, from a ladder or not. Might be some problem with your ladder damaging said subject's fence and a legal problem there but there is no expectation of privacy. With that theory, how does the paparazzi survive? What about "unintentional" views of someone's back garden from a taller building? Remember Princess Diana being hounded from all sorts of angles before she married Charlie boy? Certain government super-secret installations are allegedly off-limits but if they are THAT secret, how are we supposed to actually know they are and desist from photographing them? Ah - must be the big sign on the front: "Super secret headquarters. Do not photograph". That would do it.
@John Tserkezis
It can be a civil offense rather than a criminal one, but the law does grant for a right to privacy in the home. So a camera on a tall mast that is capable of peering over a 6' 6" fence for example, could see things that a normal person walking along the road can't. At that point the owner of the property could complain and bring a civil suit against you as you could be infringing upon their rights.
So yes, people have a legal right to complain about the height of the camera masts on the google cars: They should be no more than 6' from the ground, not 8' (as I believe they are). I can see no reasonable grounds for the masts to be so tall, either: The majority of drivers and pedestrians wouldn't see as much as the camera can, so it gives an excessive and unnecessary view over taller barriers.
IANAL but my understanding of the law is...
Under UK law, you can't do it without permission of the people whose likenesses are shown if you're exploiting the pictures commercially, as Google are doing.
It is only permissible if the image of the person is not recognisable, or there is a crowd of such people there so that one person doesn't stand out.
No, you ANAL. In the UK there is no expectation or right to privacy in a public place (which the street very clearly is) A photographer can take your picture and do whatever he likes with it and you have no rights whatsoever.
If he uses the image to libel or defame you, then there are other laws that you can fall back on for satisfaction.
HTH.
K.
This is untrue; see Campbell v Mirror News Group for an example of a case where privacy was infringed with a photo in a public area. The case involved a photo being taken of Campbell walking up to a medical centre for drugs treatment, and the freedom to publish was outweighed by the right to medical privacy (as a part of an ECHR right to a private life). MNG lost.
TL;DR: post ECHR It's more complex than an absolute right to photograph.
That case had nothing to do with being photographed in the street. It was all about the fact that she was a lying junkie! Her case was also against the tabloid that published the images alongside other information.
I repeat, if you are in a public place, you have no expectation or right to privacy! If you don't like it, stay indoors.
It did indeed have something to do with being photographed in the street, given that the court explicitly stated that "The complaint regarding the photographs is of precisely the same character as the nature of the complaints regarding the text of the articles: the information conveyed by the photographs was private information."
and
"In my opinion, therefore, the widespread publication of a photograph of someone which reveals him to be in a situation of humiliation or severe embarrassment, ****even if taken in a public place**** [emphasis added], may be an infringement of the privacy of his personal information. Likewise, the publication of a photograph taken by intrusion into a private place (for example, by a long distance lens) may in itself by such an infringement, even if there is nothing embarrassing about the picture itself: Hellewell v Chief Constable of Derbyshire [1985] 1 WLR 804, 807. As Lord Mustill said in R v Broadcasting Standards Commission, Ex p BBC [2001] QB 885, 900, "An infringement of privacy is an affront to the personality, which is damaged both by the violation and by the demonstration that the personal space is not inviolate.""
This is explicitly to do with the publication of photographs taken in a public place. You may wish to seek your legal advice elsewhere.
Oh, and a bonus quote:
"Peck v United Kingdom (2003) 36 EHRR 41 Mr Peck was filmed on a public street in an embarrassing moment by a CCTV camera. Subsequently, the film was broadcast several times on the television. The Strasbourg court said (at p. 739) that this was an invasion of his privacy contrary to article 8:
"the relevant moment was viewed to an extent which far exceeded any exposure to a passer-by or to security observation and to a degree surpassing that which the applicant could possibly have foreseen when he walked in Brentwood on August 20, 1995.""
I repeat to you, get your legal advice somewhere qualified.
@Kevan
You are correct to a point: You do not need permission to photograph someone in public.
However, if I ask you to stop, and you continue, I can charge you with harassment.
You also do not have the right to store that image. The Data Protection Act considers pictures to be personal data, so unless you are working under an exemption (there is one for photography - but it applies to 'special exemptions', notably journalism or artistic works). CCTV operate under their own remit within the DPA.
Commercial use of my image without my explicit consent is also illegal.
So I do have some rights over pictures taken of me, and a professional photographer knows this, as do most responsible amateurs.
In Streetview on a main road near my work is an image of a man the same height as me, same hair colour and wearomg the same jacket, trousers and shoes as me, arm in arm with a woman who is not my wife! I have been petitioning Google to UNBLUR that man's face to prove to the divorce courts it isn't me!!!!
So far my defence lies on him wearing a polo shirt which I almost never do.
I thought that was implicit from two obvious clues.
1) She said he broke his arm last summer and recognised the cast. Thus the pic must have been taken at the time it was broken.
2) I rather suspect that Perm at the moment is not characterised by its green, sunny aspect and people walking around in T-shirts and lightweight dresses.
She was just randomly checking an address and just happened to see her boyfriend? I doubt it - Perm is not exactly a small place, more likely someone told her where to look.
Aside from terminating a 5-year relationship on the basis of one photo (for which there may have been an innocent explanation), how did Yandex get hold of the story? I think I smell a bit of sly marketing ...
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