I find it interesting that the driver had been stopped by "10 people" concerned about the privacy of Google Street View in the same country that has thousands of CCTV cameras lining the streets.
The difference is, CCTV are pretty much used to solve crimes... They do a very very good job at it as well. You don't see the footage from CCTV cameras ending up on the internet in general.
With the google thing, you know it's going to be published.
Are the laws concerning taking pictures that much different in the UK than the US, or just the attitude?
In the US, if you take a picture on the street and there are people in the background, my understanding is that you don't need permission - they're in a public place and you're taking a picture. Is that not the case in the UK?
I believe the general mindset in most places is: "Public place, public property" meaning that if you are out "in public," you have no right to complain about others being able to see you, or take pictures that might have you in them. You are out in a public area and have no right to remove the freedom of others to take pictures of public areas. If you don't want to be in them, avoid the cameras, stay inside, or wear a veil (or mask, hoodie, etc.).
The issue is in deciding when the others (Google, in this case) abuse their freedom to take pictures. Where should we draw the line? Obviously cameras should be allowed in public places. Should pictures of others only be permitted for private use? Google wants to use the pictures with you in it to make them money. The paparazzi have a lot of freedom in taking and publishing pictures of others. Is this the same as what Google is doing? Is what the paparazzi doing crossing the line also?
The white things are LIDAR units. It's a laser range finder often used for robotics car competitions. It's the most accurate way to measure distance.
If you wonder how it works: the unit has a spinning mirror. It sends out pulses of laser light as the mirror spins and measures how quickly the light takes to return after it hits an object to return to a sensor on the unit. If you know how fast light moves and have a fast processor, you can measure distance.)
Because they are being used sideways, they sweep from sky to ground measuring distance. They are probably being used to "map" buildings as they drive by, so that the data could be used to create better 3D maps.
(They aren't perfect: reliability includes a variety of factors including environment [how do bushes and trees affect laser measurement] and distance [range may only be 50ft for instance])
Interesting, I didn't realize they had LIDAR as well.
I bet they also record WiFi and cell tower location data for geolocation (i.e. Android). If you're going to drive thousands of miles, you might as well record as much data as you can the first time...
Search up "skyhook" for information on the program that's indexed wifi hotspots for a rather ominous hybrid geolocation system; and zoom in on cities in google map view for the general contours of large buildings, which is pretty useful.
That's an interesting possibility but I wonder how fast it is to record a WiFi signal properly. On my various laptops and phone it's too slow to pick up all networks while driving at 20ish miles per hour.
