Should he have apologised?

Doc Lynam said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-27670099

A garage owner has apologised for staging a scene that looked like a murder in an Edinburgh street, which was caught on Google Street View.

This is a company we haven't asked to photo the streets where we work and live but they do it anyway, i think creative tableau making should be positively encouraged. Police were called after a complaint was made by the general public; Shirley it's a tool for mapping not policing? He has nothing to apologies for!

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father_and_son said:

I'm not a big fan of google - their "Do No Evil" mantra has long since lost its shine and they are guilty (in my opinion) of numerous abuses of privacy and commercial bullying, but just as the search engine is ubiquitous, so is street view now and I don't agree with your sentiments over creating this service.

I do agree this this guy has nothing to apologise for. Street view is a really useful service but Google need to be aware that people will look for their 15 mins of fame. The street is a public place and while google have every right to photograph it (and would anyone), everyone else has every right to d*ck about while google are doing so!

The sequence of events should have been...
Google photo street + man dicks about
MoPublic sees pic calls police - just in case
Police look
Police check with google when pic taken
Police briefly check records to see if any incident in area at that time
Police realise they have wasted 10 mins and have a laugh
Coordinates appear on social media so we can all have a laugh

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Norman Potting said:

I am sure that the BBC website implied that is pretty much what happened, particularly the last 3 points. I find Google Earth and Streetview extremely handy for work and consider it one of thos "what did we do before ...." type things.

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father_and_son said:

I'm not a big fan of google - their "Do No Evil" mantra has long since lost its shine and they are guilty (in my opinion) of numerous abuses of privacy and commercial bullying, but just as the search engine is ubiquitous, so is street view now and I don't agree with your sentiments over creating this service.

I do agree this this guy has nothing to apologise for. Street view is a really useful service but Google need to be aware that people will look for their 15 mins of fame. The street is a public place and while google have every right to photograph it (and would anyone), everyone else has every right to d*ck about while google are doing so!

The sequence of events should have been...
Google photo street + man dicks about
MoPublic sees pic calls police - just in case
Police look
Police check with google when pic taken
Police briefly check records to see if any incident in area at that time
Police realise they have wasted 10 mins and have a laugh
Coordinates appear on social media so we can all have a laugh

Click to expand...

Doc Lynam said:

A to Z

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