Objections already lodged against recordings on Google Street View do not apply to new recordings on the service. The Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Alexander Roßnagel, points this out. Anyone who wants to protect their privacy must object again.
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Google Street View is practical “for many who are interested in renting an apartment, who have to deliver something or who simply want to see who lives, how and in what environment,” says Roßnagel, who is also the spokesman for the Privacy Platform funded by the Federal Ministry of Education . But not all users have good intentions: “The depiction of the house, apartment, garden and surrounding area allows conclusions to be drawn about furnishings, financial circumstances, social level and urban integration, infrastructure, economic value, accessibility, possibilities of theft and much more. Therefore, it is understandable “This public, globally accessible presentation of one's own home is not suitable for everyone.”
He believes it is necessary to also take into account those “who defend themselves against the spying on the center of their lives,” emphasizes Roßnagel. Google is not acting in the public interest with its street view service. Rather, the group is concerned with collecting user data, combining it with information from other Google services, creating personality profiles and, above all, conducting individualized advertising. Users did not pay with money, but with information about their subjectivity in the form of their interests and behavior.
That's how it's done
“Nobody has to object, but everyone should be able to,” says Roßnagel. The data protection supervisory authorities would first have had to fight for this possibility. Although data protection law provided for contradictions in the abstract, Google only implemented an easy-to-use procedure after disputes. There is an online form as well as the email address [email protected]
. Faces and license plates must be pixelated before the images are published, without request.
According to the Hamburg data protection officer, Thomas Fuchs, there have been around 100,000 contradictions since June 2023. Roßnagel explains the comparatively small number by the fact that many people do not even see Street View, are not aware of the associated risks or are not informed about the opt-out procedure. The conscious decision to defend oneself for or against the recordings and representations of one's own house or apartment is also an expression of informational self-determination. He believes that not contradicting is not an act of data altruism. Data companies are looking to “expand their information power even further and exploit their knowledge about the people they record.”
This is where the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) comes into play. Since the regulation came into force, Google no longer displays its Google Maps service in general search results in the European Economic Area (EEA). Users must access Google Maps directly. At the same time, offers from third-party portals take up more space. As a result, the DMA brings more traffic to intermediaries, but less to some websites.
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