I don't understand why many people are upset about their building's facade being photographed, but are totally fine with satellite images. Or cameras getting installed everywhere and the European Union trying to get into people's phones for "security". At one point there was a debate against encryption because bad guys could benefit from it...
I think it's a uniquely German problem, because nowhere else in the EU did Google have to blur buildings. Having immigrated to Germany I can tell that Germans are pretty much privacy-obsessed, with strict regulations on CCTV (you will get in trouble if your camera points to the street) and hardly anyone having a social media account.
Not my observation. They aren't as privacy obsessed as it's made out to be, only when there's a big fuss made out of something. There's still heavy social media use which completely contradicts the privacy focus.
And yet it is one of the few places where it is mandatory to have your name on the publicly-facing postbox in order for mail to arrive. The privacy sentiment here is all over the place.
Another thing is the legal requirement to put your full name and home address on any website you own privately. Everyone I ask about this contradiction is like "Well it is like it is, so it probably has to be like that"
There's a quite significant event in Germany's history where the government abused data about it's citizens in a horrific way. They clearly learned a lesson from that.
The state keeps collecting all the data it wants, though. For example, you are mandated to declare where you live and what your religion is.
Germany only takes privacy seriously when it comes to private companies.
The state keeps collecting all the data it wants, though.
No, it really doesn't. The state always wants far more data than it collects. It's usually limited to what it actually needs. For example, the state has no reason to build it's own version of Streetview, so it doesn't, but you can be sure that someone in government would love unfettered access to all the data Google collects like the raw photos, details of wifi networks, etc (and in many countries Google probably gives them have exactly that).
If another truly evil government arises and seeks to wipeout vast numbers of their citizens, you can be absolutely certain one of the first things they'll do is to augment the data they already have with the data that's collected by private companies.
For Germany to fight against the collection of that data, and to try to limit who can access that data by paying or coercing Google, is very sensible.
I'll grant you they might want more, but they definitely require more than they _need_, like those two examples I mentioned: as long as I get its mail it's none of its business where I live, and it should definitely not have anything to do with church funding.
To be clear I'm also not defending Google. I just wish Germany had a higher standard for privacy vis-a-vis the public institutions.
They learned the what from the what?! In Germany one can definitely pinpoint you from name, surname, birth date, and address. Including the history of your addresses and any future addresses. Various credit agencies, legal predators, stalkers harvest this data like crazy.
Google has access to the pictures without the blur of faces and car plates and what not. It is very reasonable to not want a spyware company to roam your streets and record it.
Who is this hypothetical person who is upset with some types of surveillance and not others? I would imagine many Germans feel (like I do) equally uncomfortable with Street View, satellite image databases, widespread CCTV cameras in cities, etc.
If I had to guess, for Germany, you have basically two groups opposing it vocally, the die-hard privacy advocates (<5%) and the "inter-what?" group which does not understand how the internet, let alone how street-view, works (~20%).
Latter group actually argued that street-view would be used by burglars to identify possible targets in real-time. I recall on of these i***** to propose German police to patrol street-view!
With the large majority being neutral/positive on the topic, but not motivated to argue publicly against the other two groups. And so, again, the fringes win.
You treat the whole EU as if it was one single person. You heard different news over the years, but they are from different fractions of the EU and Germany.
Yes, there are weasel politicians who will jump at the opportunity to give more power to themselves and big corporations even if a poor right wing factory worker in East Germany hates big tech surveillance. Yes, you'll find people who prefer the convenience of G Street View and are willing to give up some of their privacy for that.
But there will be people who see this as one more concession to the surveillance state, so they will fight it. Give an inch and they'll take a mile. Germans remember this from Nazi Germany, WW2, and the mass surveillance of East Germany (and some now have even more paranoia after the COVID lockdowns).
So no, I don't think you'll have too many people who are seriously upset about Google "scanning" the whole country but are happy about having cameras everywhere and governments installing spyware onto our phones.
Satellite images won't show private areas. It's even hard to tell anything significant about the area besides that something is there.
> Or cameras getting installed everywhere
They follow privacy laws, don't record private areas, and are not public accessible. There are also generally less security cameras in Germany than in similar countries AFAIK.
> Satellite images won't show private areas. It's even hard to tell anything significant about the area besides that something is there.
Nowadays 15 cm (pan-sharpened from 30cm) commercial imagery of 100% of German land is readily available to any buyer who has the money. And there is even better imagery available to the major intelligence agencies.
So 100% of private areas in Germany, viewable from above, are already under observation 24/7 to a resolution capable of distinguishing chairs from people from dogs from umbrellas, etc...
That person doesn't really exist, at least not in Germany which this is about. The issue was never just Street View. Ubiquitous surveillance has been a topic for a long time, in German fashion we invented a phrase for it, "Gläserner Bürger", literally a 'glass citizen'. It's no accident we're a huge outlier when it comes to cash payments as well, people like their anonymity.
As for the encryption debate, the difference is that it is literally that, a democratic debate. There's still a difference here between trade-offs being made for national security or policing, and private firms just running circles around you to make more dollars. The latter will always cause more anger.
Credit card penetration in Germany is ~60%. Compared to ~15% in Poland. eCommerce penetration is ~77%. Presumably that doesn't involve mailing in wads of cash.
