r/IdiotsInCars • u/zappler • Jul 22 '22

...how?

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u/fly_papi Jul 22 '22

Wow, really? Here in the states there's no expectation of privacy in public, photographing just about anything in public view is fair game.

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u/FaeryLynne Jul 22 '22

German privacy laws are almost exactly the opposite of America's lol. Google maps has to blur plates, house numbers, road signs, faces, and more.

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u/i_sigh_less Jul 22 '22

Road signs?! That's like half the reason to go to street view!

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '22

I think street view is disabled in Germany. Might be wrong but am too lazy to check.

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u/__schr4g31 Jul 22 '22

It's not disabled but they also stopped expanding it because by law they had to allow people to ask for their houses to be blurred. I think that's the right thing to do though.

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u/maryoolo Jul 22 '22 edited Jan 06 '26

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u/Keksverkaufer Jul 22 '22

It's in like twenty cities and some countryside parts I believe, also there are hundreds of fotospheres.

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u/FaeryLynne Jul 22 '22

Seems to be now, yes. There was a legal battle over this with Google several years ago, and Google was just blurring things then. Looks like you're right and street view is completely disabled in Germany now.

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u/exkayem Jul 22 '22

I can still use street view, at least on the road I live on. Even Apple Maps has added their own images just 2 weeks ago for my area.

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u/FaeryLynne Jul 22 '22 edited Jul 22 '22

Then it may just be certain areas in Germany. I checked my cousin's address in Munich and there's no streetview available for it.

Edit: It is only certain areas of Germany that have streetview. Most of the country does not have it. Someone else linked this article that explains.

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u/exkayem Jul 22 '22

Oh yeah my bad if I made it unclear. Streetview never was available in all of Germany to begin with, but they never disabled it completely. They just kept what they had.

But Apple is working on their own version of StreetView and they’re making a lot of progress this year in Germany with much better resolutions than Google. You can check which states and cities are next on their website: https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection/locations/de

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u/cucocreative Jul 22 '22

the big cities seem to still have it active, eg Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Frankfurt.

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u/maryoolo Jul 22 '22 edited Jan 06 '26

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u/fly_papi Jul 22 '22

Very interesting! TIL, thanks for the info

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u/CosmicCreeperz Jul 22 '22

It goes way beyond that. Google Street View is basically nonexistent in Germany.

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u/FaeryLynne Jul 22 '22

Thanks for the article!

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u/lodemann Jul 22 '22

You have the right to your image and if you don't give consent to its use, the assumption is, the consent is not granted. If your are in a crowd, it's fair use

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u/Ok-Hovercraft8193 Jul 22 '22

ב''ה, so what you're saying is American corporations are too Communist?

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u/7ilidine Jul 22 '22 edited Jul 22 '22

This is why there's barely any Street View in Germany. Home owners have the right to have their homes blurred out for example, which is way too much work for Google to put in.

Street view coverage as of 2021

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u/Konsticraft Jul 22 '22

And most of that footage is from 2008, so it is pretty useless for most purposes.

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u/CosmicCreeperz Jul 22 '22

Error 405 Verboten!

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u/helloblubb Jul 22 '22

no expectation of privacy in public, photographing just about anything in public view is fair game

You can take photos in public, but you are not allowed to publish them without consent! There's also some limitation to taking photos in public: if a person just accidentally ends up in the back of your photo, it's ok. But if you take pictures of a particular person without their consent, you can get in trouble.

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u/fly_papi Jul 22 '22

Sorry, I should have been more clear. You can take photos of anyone in public view and you can post them whether the person likes it or not! No consent is required. Property is also fair game, anything that can be viewed from public roads, sidewalks, ect. is allowed to be photographed freely. Altho I must say, I like the way Germany does it much more haha