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Google Maps Street View is a very useful navigation tool for residents and visitors alike. However, not all countries have welcomed Google’s iconic Street View cars onto their streets. Germany, one of these long-standing holdouts, has only recently begun to change its stance after more than a decade of resistance. but why?
Germans value privacy
The European Union has some of the world’s strictest regulations and requirements for data protection, as evidenced by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and record fines imposed on technology companies that improperly process data. Within the EU, Germany as a whole is particularly committed to privacy.
2015 harvard business review This study tests the value of privacy. In a study of nearly 1,000 people in five countries (US, UK, Germany, China, and India), researchers found that respondents were willing to pay to keep different types of data private. I tested whether.
Germans surveyed are generally willing to pay a relatively high price to protect data such as government identification, credit card information, digital communication history, web browsing, and health history. I answered. In fact, a German respondent was willing to pay $184 to protect his medical history. This is the highest amount anyone is willing to pay to protect any type of personal information.
harvard business review He said the US, UK and Germany are more individualistic societies than India and China, two groups that had no interest in paying to have their data protected. However, while this explanation may have some validity, it does not tell the whole story when it comes to Germany.
Germany’s experience with the surveillance state influences modern views on privacy
Germany has a close history with government surveillance not found in many other developed countries, and its repercussions are still being felt.
The country is still less than a century removed from the Third Reich’s deadly and world-changing rise to power, a catapult to control built primarily on surveillance.
In 1933, then-President Adolf Hitler capitol brand governance, or enact the Capitol Fire Ordinance into law. There are countless moments when historians can quote: of This moment, when the Nazis’ rise to power became unstoppable, was a pivotal moment in the dismantling of civil liberties, free speech, and privacy in Germany.
The above-mentioned statutory instrument prohibited the publication of newspapers, but the comprehensive statute also provided for personal freedom (habeas corpus), freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, the right to organization and assembly, and the privacy of postal, telegraph, and communications. rights were also suspended. and telephone communication. It also allowed law enforcement (Nazis) to confiscate and search property completely unchecked.
Initially promised to last three months in response to the famous Capitol fire, it actually many For longer, it helped the Nazis control and violate the German people under the guise of legal authority.
A more recent moment of surveillance in German history is, of course, the Soviet surveillance state that existed in East Germany from October 1949 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.
Today, many Germans have experienced part of the Ministry of State Security’s reign of terror. The Soviet Ministry of State Security, known as the “Stasi,” invaded privacy and surveilled East German citizens in ways that the Nazis were unable to do in the 1930s and early 1940s. Over the past 50 years, technology, including camera technology, has evolved significantly.
It’s no surprise, then, that even today Germans feel a little uneasy about the idea that some vague entity is watching them and collecting data.
The modern German state built itself into a world power on the graves of two destructive and horrible governments that had little respect for privacy.
Google Street View of the failed German invasion of 2009-2011
When Google launched Street View in the United States in 2007, there was some trepidation, but the company managed to map 5 million miles of roads across nearly 40 countries in its first five years. By his 10th anniversary, Street View had captured 10 million miles of his roads in 83 countries.
During that time, Germany remained conspicuously absent, save for some lingering Street View data here and there. While Google mapped surrounding countries and covered them with a blanket of interconnected images, much of Germany remained a huge blank space in Street View.
When Google set out to map the country in 2010, it learned firsthand how serious Germans are about their privacy. The company’s announcement that it would start mapping roads in 20 major German cities was immediately met with fierce backlash.
German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner at the time said Berlin and Google had reached an agreement earlier that year and that Google would only launch its Street View service if all privacy concerns were resolved.
“What’s private has to stay private,” Aigner said.
Google, for its part, said there were no delays even though people learned that Google was using unencrypted Wi-Fi data to generate panoramic images. This is such a serious issue that Austria completely banned Google Street View until 2017. Still, due to Austrian privacy laws, Street View shows a fairly sparse map of Austria.
“We take privacy very seriously,” Google Germany spokeswoman Lena Wagner said in a 2010 interview. Deutsche Welle.
“Many fears are based on misinformation, such as that Street View images are real-time, when in fact images are from a few months to up to two years old at the time a particular area is deployed. We take privacy protection very seriously, which is why we have developed state-of-the-art operational and technical controls for Street View. [for example] This includes automatic blurring of faces and license plates.” Wagner spoke about the fears people had at the time of Google Street View, saying that Google Street View’s images allowed ordinary people to take pictures of themselves walking down the street. Nothing has changed,” he added.
Germany was the first and only country where Google allowed people to opt out Permanently Prevent your home from being photographed by Street View cameras before the images are published. Google believes this is good enough and concerns will be addressed.
Well, that was not at all how the Germans looked at it at the time. German nationals destroyed Street View cars and cameras and threatened people.
Aigner called Google Street View a “million-fold invasion of the private sphere” and said no secret agency in the world collects personal data “so shamelessly.” Stated. The German government has told Google that everyone Photographed with a street view camera.
Practical concerns were immediate, and Google ultimately halted its plans to expand Street View in Germany in 2011, despite winning an important legal victory in a Berlin court in 2010.
Where is the current German Street View?
Heck, Google tried again to roll out Street View in Germany last year, and while the rollout was more limited in scope than in neighboring countries, it went relatively smoothly this time.
“As always, we take your privacy seriously and will disable automatic face and license plate recognition,” Google wrote on a German blog last July.
In a somewhat transparent attempt to avoid the same problems as in 2010 and 2011, Google is now cooperating with Germany’s privacy commissioner.
The road to catching up with neighboring countries is long and difficult. But for now, Google is taking photos at street level in Germany, and people seem to be far less upset than before.
Why is Google Street View, which previously failed miserably, now working in Germany?
Have people’s views on Street View changed since then, or has Germans’ desire for privacy evolved? My money is on the latter, but Street View is so useful that it doesn’t violate privacy. I’m sure there are people out there who think it’s worth it.
Even in 2009 and 2010, some communities in Germany were showing off their cities in Street View in the hopes of boosting tourism and the local economy, which undoubtedly suffered during the 2008 economic crisis. They came together to choose.
Over time, those who lived through Germany’s surveillance state die and are replaced by younger generations who do not have first-hand experience and the fear that comes with it. Additionally, technology companies like Google and Meta have been encroaching on privacy a little at a time.
Like the famous fable about the frog being slowly boiled alive, invasions of privacy seem less upsetting when told gradually over time. One of the world’s most private institutions has long resisted the giant Google, but that too has come to a standstill.
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