Basically this, when you watch the news, the faces are not blurred out, those that are just passing by or such but when you use google maps, they blur out peoples faces and such. Both are publicly accessible and I just wonder what the difference is.
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If you’re in a public space you are in public. This means in the UK that your legal rights to privacy are limited. So there’s never been any legal or cultural prohibition on catching people on camera when they’re out in a public space.
In the past, at least, a TV crew would be fairly visible. If you don’t want to be on camera, don’t walk into shot. Resolution would be low, limiting the ability to identify people. Since shots are chosen and reviewed by people. They *should* be careful if they’re filming around any sensitive locations, and might spot anything problematic that’s caught on camera. And something like a new report might be transmitted a couple of times and then be gone. So the potential privacy harms are limited. Or at least were – some of these things are open to question now.
Google Street View has multiple differences. The key one is the scale of data collection. It’s not just an occasional bit of location filming, it’s photos of every single street, every single location. These pictures are permanently available (at least until they’re updated) and much more accessible than a news report. It’s also harder to avoid being caught by a Street View camera – indeed you might well not even know, unless you spot the car(/backpack/other vehicles used).
It may also be worth noting that the relationship between filming in public and the public has grown up over time. Both sides have expectations over what’s acceptable. Google just decided to start doing street view, without any public discussion, and had to be *forced* to blur people’s faces.
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