Police Credit Google Street View For Helping Catch Drug Ring
from the you're-on-google-camera dept
Following on our recent story of police using Google Street View to give them a lead in a stolen car incident, comes another report, sent in by Joshy, of a heroin dealing ring in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who was dealing on the streets out in the open -- and also were caught on Google Street View images:
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: drug ring, street view
Companies: google
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Re: Google violated rights?
First, I don't blame you for thinking this is a violation of "rights" as I likely would have thought the same thing before I became a police officer over a decade ago. But I do get this complaint often from fellow citizens who do not realize that in a public place, the supreme court has ruled that one's expectation of privacy is very limited. I don't necessarily whole sale agree with this, but it is what it is.
Therefore, when in a public place, the default is that you should be aware you can be photographed. Exceptions would be the act of photographing someone during the course of harassment, which would require a pattern of behavior toward an individual by another individual/entity, in in which case would be a CIVIL issue, not a constitutional rights issue. Furthermore, if the pattern of photographing someone is being carried out to catch criminal behavior, the situation reverses again back to the right of the photographer to photograph someone in a public place over a series of incidents.
In short, Google isn't violating anyone's rights to photograph people on the street, and have taken efforts VOLUNTARILY to obscure faces and license plate numbers from their images. This was not a legal requirement, it was there own policy arguably "just to be kind" but certainly to avoid any civil lawsuits, frivolous or otherwise. This of course does not include the pictures that captured the goings-on INSIDE of some home where the curtains/blinds were pulled back. While that was still ostensibly not a legal issue, it could very easily be made into a strong civil case as rather than being an inadvertent pic you or I might capture when taking a picture of the front of a house, Google's planned practice of taking a picture of the front of just about every house could make them a lot more liable, again CIVILLY, by nor taking measures to obscure what they capture INSIDE houses.
Again, if anyone thinks Google 'worked with the police' on this clearly does not understand how minuscule the contribution, if any contribution at all, this photograph would have for the case in relation to the plethora of other evidence.
Add Your Comment