Why There's Almost No Google Street View In Germany - Cheddar Explains

let's pick up pegman and go on a trip how about europe oh wait you see that big white spot it's not a glitch it's germany google street view is practically non-existent there and it's not for google's lack of trying in fact they've tried to launch street view in germany twice but both times they didn't succeed google is a major corporation that has implemented street view in almost every country around the world there are 10 million miles of street view imagery and 36 million square miles of google earth imagery and google says it covers 98 of the places in the world where people live and street view has a lot of benefits it can help you find what the outside of a building you're looking for looks like or let you see what famous cities look like on the ground so that begs the question why is germany uncharted [Music] in 2001 google sponsored a stanford university research project called the stanford city block the students aimed to document their university and parts of san francisco in clickable 3d format the research project ended in 2006 when google decided to turn it into street view street view officially launched in 2007. the next year google merged street view and google maps and introduced pegman as the primary user interface over the next few years little google branded cars with big cameras blazed the way for street view to expand across the globe at around 1 million miles a year but when those cars tried to get into germany they were turned away germany wasn't having it to figure out why we have to look at german's relationship with their own privacy germany passed the world's first data protection law in 1970. it was revolutionary in that sphere and it set the stage for germany's attitude towards data sharing the court ended up ruling that german citizens had the right to informational self-determination and to be able to block the sharing of personal information with any government agency and these precedents meant that in 2010 the german federal constitutional court overturned a law that allowed authorities to store phone and email data for six months for security reasons the judge called this a grave intrusion of personal privacy rights this atmosphere of privacy protection didn't come out of nowhere during the nazi regime the state secret police force called the casapo effectively eliminated a right to privacy and citizens could be branded as criminals for private thoughts or acts resulting in severe punishment eighty percent of all gestapo investigations were brought on by denunciations by ordinary german citizens who were informing on their family members and neighbors that resulted in the very first article of then west germany's post-war constitution human dignity shall be inviolable to respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority but in east germany the secret police or stasi reigned over personal privacy they contracted an estimated 190 000 part-time secret informants and employed an additional 90 000 officers full-time in total that's about one in every 50 adult east germans as of 1990. they tapped phones read correspondence and jailed and tortured people based on this information one man roland brockman was jailed for 15 months in 1982 because he printed flyers for a protestant church and the anti-nuclear movement german citizens recalled not daring to voice their thoughts even to their spouses best friends or pastors for fear of disappearing into the penal system that history has led to distrust of people having your personal information for example in 2016 80 of all point-of-sale transactions meaning in-person sales like grocery shopping or buying a shirt at a store were made in cash rather than a credit card in comparison in the netherlands only 46 of these transactions were in cash so in august of 2010 when google announced it was going to map germany's 20 biggest cities germans were not thrilled the idea that pictures of their houses and streets were going to be publicly available was just intolerable some of google's camera cars were vandalized a 70 year old man threatened a google driver with a garden pick three percent of households in those areas requested their houses to be blurred out this is what it looked like on street view that's an unprecedented level of resistance that google just hadn't faced before so they published the data that they had already collected but left it at that they haven't taken any new street view images in germany or austria since then in contrast only 200 brits asked for their houses to be blurred just zero .000 zero zero three percent of the population and then it got worse in may 2010 it was revealed that google had used data from unencrypted wi-fi connections when collating its roadside pictures elise agner germany's minister for consumer protection at the time called street view a comprehensive photo offensive and a million-fold violation of the private sphere she also said there is not a secret service in existence that would collect photos so unabashedly when the google streetcar was moving through streets to collect visual data for creating the maps they were actually collecting all this data from the different households the authorities find google 189 225 almost the maximum amount they can find corporations 195 000 the man in charge of the investigations data protection supervisor johannes casper said that he didn't charge them the full amount because google eventually gave him a copy of the german data they had collected to a lot of germans that was a slap in the face 189 225 dollars is roughly 0.002 percent of google's 10.7 billion net profit or what google made every two minutes that year academics activists and even regulators themselves say fines that are pocket change for big companies do little to deter them from misbehaving again and are just baked into the cost of doing business when google announced in 2017 that they were going to try again another full three percent of german households opted to have their houses blurred out google also promised that they'd only hold the unblurred footage of license plates and houses for a short period of time but they haven't made any progress since then while it may seem like the effort may be more than it's worth to get straight view into germany that's not quite the case people's use of street view lets google accumulate lots of information allowing them to tailor ads to each person the more times each person clicks on an ad the more money google makes so it makes sense as to why they want those ads to be as clickable as possible and one of the big differences we see in europe and the us is the opt-in opt-out policy so in europe you're not allowed to collect data without allowing the user to actively opt in into having that data collected whether it's an email or a telephone number when you subscribe to a list while in the us in a lot of these cases it was an automatic collection and then you can opt out but that data was already collected is germany being overly cautious about street view some experts say yes and some say no but germany's caution is understandable after their political history especially when large companies have few checks on their power and a lot of information but a majority of germans still have accounts with these internet companies and younger germans are less concerned than their elders according to the new york times but while people are easing up governing agencies are becoming more strict the eu slapped google with one of the top five biggest finds ever five billion dollars for forcing smartphone manufacturers using the android operating system to pre-install google browser apps on their phones if they refused they were denied access to google's app store and streaming services it's in a word problematic but with the introduction of bigger fines it's possible that they'll make big enough dent in companies budgets to make a difference but street views issues already exist and data is already out there as other mapping engines make their own street view equivalents it's worth wondering where our information is stored and what these companies are doing to protect it comment down below what you think of data privacy trends in the past few years don't forget to like this video subscribe and make sure you ring the bell for post notifications we'll see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 930,301

Rating: 4.8462105 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, cheddar explores, explainer, germany, google, google streetview, streetview, deutschland, europe, google maps, navigation, privacy, regulations, germany history, history, cold war, banned, streetview banned, privacy laws, streetview finds, streetview car, google car, berlin, cybersecurity, technology, personal freedom, rights, privacy law, data, personal data, personal data collection, personal information

Id: mFYPB-mkiMc

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020