Case Analysis on Privacy Submission Link

Case Analysis: A More Ethical Way to Implement Google Street View

Introduction

Google maps is one of the services provided by google. With the help of google maps users can navigate the directions easily, it also tells the users when they can reach their targeted location whether it’s by walking, driving, biking or public transportation. Google maps allow its users to see the place, street, building and neighborhoods through a 360-degree photograph with the help of feature known as Google street view. Google introduced Google Street View in many big cities in America back in 2007 and after some time expanded it to several counties other than America. However, like many things in this world google maps also have pros and cons. Without permission from citizens/people google used cars to photograph their car, yards, home and even people which created a serious concern in terms of privacy. Google tried to solve this issue by blurring private information like vehicle plate numbers, faces of people and by letting people request the removal of the picture they’re concerned about. Vaidhyanathan doesn’t agree with googles way of trying to solve the privacy concern. he believes that it shouldn’t be people’s responsivity to protect their privacy after Google invaded it, google should have come up with the better solution in the first place before making things public. Every country had their own reaction and understanding of privacy. In Japan, people didn’t want the cameras to look or capture over fences. In Germany and Greece, officials wanted Google to provide them more information and stronger security protections. One of the main ethical questions that arise in this situation is whether or not google could have prevented this privacy concern while also providing the service.

In this Case Analysis I will argue that in perspective of Consequentialism, Google should have found a better way to implement Google street view without risking the privacy of people. Google should have sent advanced notice to residents, provided protection for privacy as the default in the features, provided stronger anonymization and kept the privacy expectations of people in mind.

Luciano Floridi and Informational Friction

Luciano Floridi’s discussion shows the new perspective on the privacy concerns caused by Street View. informational friction is one of the central concepts of Floridi. It means a barrier that is making obtaining, accessing and sharing information a lot harder. It is important to have barriers because they can protect the privacy of people. Barrier does not make information available right Infront you. Back in the days when technology wasn’t easily accessible, in order to see a place or location, people had to physically travel there, investing their time, effort and money to observe it themselves but as technology advanced into the world that barrier is not there anymore. Technology makes it very easy to see and observe the place right where you are, making information easily accessible. Google Street View is one of the examples of it. Informational friction was greatly reduced by Google street view. As long as, there’s internet access and a device anyone can search for the address on google maps and learn about the area and location with even putting an effort to travel there physically. The information that googles street view provides is easily accessible and detailed, before a person could see the houses on the street, they’re physically present on but with the help of street view they can share the information with other and view any houses or street multiple times. It is not just about how Google cars captured the photos without permission; it is also about how street view broke the barriers and made information easily accessible to everyone.

Vaidhyanathan talks about this issue in discussion of Aaron and Christine. Aaron and Christine didn’t want the image of their home and driveway to be put in the street view. The courts decided that Aaron and Christine can ask Google to remove any of the image they do want to be out in public, however once an image is out on the internet you lose control of it. It is important because the people that were affected would have no idea how many places the picture has already been to before they become aware of it. There’s another serious example of a child with no clothes on that Vaidhyanathan talks about in his discussion. He was photographed in London. no one knows how many people had viewed, copied or shared that image before someone noticed and notified the google. Google did delete the picture, but it was accessible to public for at least 48 hours before that.

According to Consequentialism, what approach Google should have taken to cause least amount of harm and the greatest good for the greatest number of people can be determined with the result of its action. “Consequentialism focuses on the consequences of the actions people take. For a consequentialist, an action is right if the consequences of that action were good, and wrong if the consequences of that action were bad” Consequentialism might not support the idea of banning the Google street view. This feature of Google Maps is helpful and useful for so many people. Vaidhyanathan mentions that street view is used to study the streets and area by architects while regular people use it to look for navigation, look for homes, find restaurants and many other things. However, consequentialism would want Google to think about if the benefits of street view were still possible to achieve while causing the least amount of harm to privacy of the people. Google should have done better to achieve this goal because these benefits are possible without causing as much damage as it did to privacy. Google could have used better approach to maintain the benefits of street view with stronger anonymization to hide personal and sensitive information or image, cameras could have been lowered in residential areas, they could have sent advance notice to people to inform and created a system that takes least amount of time to remove the requested pictures. Doing these things would have reduced the privacy concern of the people while also maintaining the benefits Street View has to offer. The default approach that Google chose was the biggest issue. First Google took the pictures without permission of the residents and publicized it. After that Google expected people to request them to remove the image that they did not want out on the internet for public to see. Consequentialism finds this problematic because people should get the chance to prevent damage before it occurs. Vaidhyanathan mentions that not everyone has equal access to technology or skills required to use it. Many people such as senior citizens, children, limited access may not even know that their image and sensitive information have been captured and publicized by google making them more vulnerable than others.

It is Googles responsibility to make the default privacy protection. Since the beginning Google should have made privacy one of the top priorities. Every country has their own understanding of privacy so when Google received to many complaints from residents of Japan that Google cars are capturing over the fences, Google took approach the problem in appropriate way and told them that lower cameras are going to be used to reshoot the street view. It shows that it is possible to have benefits of street view without risking the privacy of residents.With the help of Floridi’s concept of informational friction, we can understand how privacy has changed due to Google. Google street view made it so much easier to get information without even having to move physically. In perspective of consequentialist, Google shouldn’t have reduced almost all the informational friction and risked personal information, with better approach Google could have avoided damage and still made the service useful.

Grimmelmann and Privacy as Product Safety

James Grimmelmann introduces an important way of looking at the concerns regarding street view on his discussion. according to Grimmelmann, in some ways privacy can be seen as a product-safety problem. He believes that when people buy a product, they should be able to trust the product and that it comes with features that reduce the potential harm while still being useful instead of them having to protect themselves from the risk caused by the product.

Grimmelmanns’ perspective applies to the issue regarding street view because most of the big design decision on Google street view is in control of Google. Google controlled Google cars, what pictures to capture, where to travel, how much to capture and on what angle. Google is also responsible for default privacy protection on its system, blurring the personal information and designing the system that is quick to remove the requested image. Even with all this power and control over the design of street view, Google still put most of the responsibility of privacy on people. It is impossible to monitor Streetview, which makes this approach of Google very problematic and concerning. Going back to the example of child from London that Vaidhyanathan mentioned, how can a child be able to monitor his image on street view, even if someone sees the image and notify the Google and they remove it, it is very difficult to know how many times that picture has been share and copied. Consequentialism agrees with the idea of preventing the damage before it happens. If google could built in the privacy protection and use a better approach to solve the concern before it even occurs, it will create a greater good for maximum people without having to wait for someone to notify. The way Google approached the situation doesn’t undo the harm already caused by the publication of image. Google should have used a better approach from the beginning and used a default privacy protection to prevent the harm. Google had many ways they could have used for street view such as adding a default feature for better protection, creating a system that is faster for image removal, lower camera angles, sent notice few days before sending Google cars etc. Vaidhyanathan believes pets, homes, vehicles, area and even physical character can be used to identify a person not just face and license plate.

From Vaidhyanathan’s discussion of reaction from other countries, the importance of privacy can be understood. Strong protection was important for Germanys privacy officials while Greek wanted to know how the data are stored and used along with more information. Osamu Higuchi from Japan stated that even though the streets from residential area are public, residents in Japan could still feel like it’s part of their everyday living environment. Since no one would know who is actually looking at their private environment, Osamu Higuchi objected the approach of Google street view along with many other Japan’s resident which led Google to capture the areas and location with lowered camera angle in Japan. From different reactions of different countries, it shows that expectations of privacy are not the same everywhere. It depends on the culture and communities of the country. Consequentialism might agree with Googles way of fixing the approach depending on the country however the issue could have been prevented from happing if they had done enough research about the country and consulted with locals, governments, and privacy officials before expanding.

According to Grimmelmann’s idea of product-safety, the complaints of privacy concern from the people should not be the only way to determine if the street view was ethical or not. Many people might not even know that they are affected or do not know how the complain process works therefore never notified google or complained. Googles street view benefits millions of people for various reasons however it doesn’t mean that there’s no damage just because there’s way less complaints than users. Because of these reasons, Google should have considered privacy one of the top priorities while designing and launching the Google street view. It should have been Googles responsibility to create a product that reduce the maximum amount of damage. People should not be responsible fully for their own privacy while using street view. Google should have used the approach that prevents the damage before happening and creates a greatest good for people while maintaining the function of the product from the point of consequentialism.

Conclusion

Overall, Street view has many benefits, however Google should have done a better job when they first developed and launched it to the public. It caused a lot of privacy concern and damage. From Floridi’s discussion of informational friction it’s understandable how big privacy changes. the street view caused. Grimmelmann’s idea of product-safety explains that Google should have implemented the features to better prevent the harm instead of expecting the people to take responsibility for it. From Consequentialism’s point of view Google should have tried with the best of their ability to minimize the risk and protect privacy while also maintaining the use and purpose of street view. It’s possible that Street view might be less useful and more expensive with strict privacy protection because it could minimize what the street view has to offer however, Google was not being asked to remove the street view instead they were being asked to use the approach that creates least amount of harm while maintaining the purpose of the street view. People would still use street view even with better privacy protection. It is companies’ responsibility to make their product useful while minimizing the damage, they should not expect people to take responsibility for it.