1) of course it does. for now. only that they somehow armwrestled authorities and they will be starting uploading in a couple of months.

2) they should have asked FIRST. i snapped photos of the Google car going around my neighborhood before they got stopped.

3) “reasonable” to you or me is not the matter here. it is about a corporation that bullies its way through national governments and peoples lives. they had similar issues in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Japan.

4) a corporation is not a person so it must be regulated accordingly. one thing is a tourist snapping a pic another is a non controlled entity acquiring data of such epic proportions. so yes they do blur your face but they still have the originals along with plenty other data. should they be allowed to do so? and why?

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-street-view-sued-by-swiss-privacy-watchdog/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/164810/google_street_views_faces_privacy_critics_in_japan_and_greece.html

http://germannews.info/techno/3091.html

corporations are shops. they sell stuff. i choose to buy or not to buy from them, but they should never ever be allowed to be more than that. if i decide that i don’t want my picture taken it’s none of your business to demand that i should. as a state we have decided for whatever reason not to allow large databases of indiscriminate public data to exist it is none of your business to demand it. if we like it like this, it must be respected. if you don’t like it take your business elsewhere.

i prefer to vote for my laws not trust the benevolence of a CEO. we deposed our king and our dictators long ago. i suggest that you should do so too.

and as i said the Swiss and the Germans have their issues with Google too. they actually sued. good for them.

it is sad to see how many people believe that a corporation is a better safekeeper of their rights than their own elected government.

Spoken like someone who isn’t an Australian.

The National Broadband Network is being rolled-out by the Department of Communications at a cost of $50 Billion or so.

I am scared at the amount of power Google has accumulated, but so far they have not done anything that seriously pisses me off. They have on the other hand done an awful lot to make me think they’re still living by their motto.

As for

they are still filtering their results in China, what happened to their dramatic exit?

Google aren’t exactly a local milkbar. They’re not going to be able to pack up and exit the country in less than a month. Nor did they say they were definitely leaving. They said they needed to review dealings with China and make a decision. They might be in negotiations with the Chinese Government right now about whether they should filter results or not. They might have had a board meeting and decided that offering competition to Baidu (from what I gather, pretty much the only other search engine in China) is still morally the correct thing to do filtering or no filtering.

As for Stephen Conroy. This guy really needs to be removed from Government. He seems bent on building the biggest steepest slippery slope into fascism my country has ever faced.

But srsly, between Conroy and Atkinson, Australia really is starting to suck.

Despite religion having little effect on the day-to-day opinions and decisions of many ordinary Australians, our politicians are for some reason unfortunately still very religious (I suppose after all it’s an easy way to buy a bunch of votes).

The other problem is that many Aussies are still quite technologically uneducated, meaning that idiots like Conroy can spew lies, drop a big name like Google, and people will go “oh yeah… thats a website… it must be true.”

This country’s politicians make me ashamed. The greens are the only party that ever say anything meaningful or intelligent.

That still doesn’t change the fact that Google, as judged by its actions, is a swell overlord. I don’t give two shits that they violated the “no public photography” law in Greece any more than I give a damn that they are violating Australian censorship laws or everyone’s book copyright laws. You are declaring Google evil for what it is, and I am giving you a “meh” and declaring Google dandy for what it actually does.

When Google violates a law that I care about, I’ll look properly upset. When Google violates laws that I would happily violate myself, I frankly don’t care.

My argument isn’t that Google is a swell company looking out for me. My argument is that Google profit model aligns their interests with mine. I want free open information exchanges and greater connectivity in the world, and so does Google.

I have to say, watching Google duke it out with other companies (and governments) recently, and I really feel like if have to accept an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful corporation to rule the world, I’ll take the Google brand. It is just a lot of little things that add up. Google saying ‘screw it’ to China and Austria is one piece. The night and day difference between Google’s brand of openess against Apple’s draconian closed ecosystem is another piece.

It isn’t that Google is benevolent (though a certain former Warsaw Pact major share holder probably doesn’t hurt), it is just that they have found a model that frankly works best when things are more or less free. Could Google do something nasty to try and boost profits temporarily? Sure. It just doesn’t make any sense to do so. Why squander reputation and potential market share by pissing off the base? Google is simply better off not having to deal with nasty speech regulation and corporate lock in. They are boosted by connectivity and the free and open use of the Internet. The profitable thing to do just so happens to be the right thing to do.

It still scares me a bit how much info Google has its hands on, but eh, I feel more comfortable with Google having it than the Apple or Facebook. What scares me is how much they have, not how they have been using it.

I guess I could sum up my feelings by saying this:

I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

Greece had a terrible government 25 years ago. It was awful, genuinely evil. The fact that both Google and your former regime took pictures in public … is really kind of silly and irrelevant. They’re buildings and streets. In public. Public buildings. Let’s see the pictures.

That is what you have the referendum system for, isn’t it? To make meaningful changes to your constitution?

Take Google Street View for example. Who did they ask to take photos of whole cities and upload them? In Greece this is illegal due to privacy laws yet they armwrestled our weak country into obedience. We should be all equal under the rule of law yet Google is above the law, actually they are becoming rapidly the law, so i don’t think that they are paladins of justice. at all.

use their products but don’t fool yourself that they will not sell your data or screw you for profit if/when the occasion arises.

PS: they are still filtering their results in China, what happened to their dramatic exit?

Your position seems to be that all laws are equally worthy of being followed, so I don’t understand why you care whether Google is still filtering in China. Either that, or you’re saying it’s okay for Google to break the law in China but not in Greece.

By the way, it’s really illegal in Greece to take photos out on the *street*? You gotta be kidding me (which is to say, I’m sure you’re not kidding me, but that still sounds pretty crazy).

The sinister depths that the Clean Feed could allow the Government to plunder Australians access to information is frightening, well and truly past the confused limits of what is deemed acceptable breast size for women in pornography.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/operation-titstorm-hackers-bring-down-government-websites-20100210-nqku.html

Having someone worth voting for next election would be cool =/

By contrast, Google exists entirely at the pleasure of their users. If we stop trusting them, we can leave Google overnight and go to Yahoo mail and Bing.