Street View Sabotage! [Updated × 2]
Wednesday, 7th May 2008 by Alex Turnbull
Two more incidences of sabotage discovered - see the end of this post
Many people have voiced their concerns regarding the privacy implications of Google's Street View service - but what if there were a way to "opt-out" of having your neighbourhood displayed online?
Yes, it appears that some enterprising resident of Fairbanks, Alaska, has worked out how to completely disable the Street View car's onboard recording device! Even better, the process doesn't involve any technical wizardry - all you need to do is stick a plastic bag over the top of the camera.
We can be quite sure this is a plastic bag too, because it actually says "plastic bag" on it. Unfortunately we're not familiar enough with Alaskan plastic bags to tell you exactly what shop it's from.
(Image rotated 180°)
The saboteurs must have been extremely quick on their feet of course, as the bag appeared without any warning while the car was travelling at speed along College Road.1
The bag remains in place for quite a long way actually - right along College Road, onto the Old Steese Highway and halfway up Minnie Street, where it finally disappears at the junction with Clara Street.
Hopefully the discovery of this exciting technique will allow privacy advocates everywhere to finally thwart Google's endlessly evil efforts to provide us all with really useful driving directions!
Update: It seems those sneaky Alaskans are disabling Street View cameras with anything they can get their hands on - as proven by these images captured by a vehicle in Anchorage. Thanks to Alaskan in the comments.
Update 2: Again in Anchorage, commenter Barry from Alaska caught the Street View camera wearing what looks like a tin-foil hat.
Thanks to Alden.
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Unless... (cue dramatic chipmunk) - you don't think the guys in the car put the plastic bag there deliberately, do you? ↩︎
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
It’s the freshest anti-spying device straight out of Area51;
There were two passes made–you can move the view to the other side of the street for a clear view, so it obscures any clues about where the bag came from or where it went..
Why is there a OSX launch bar (or whatever they call it) in the last thumbnail? Secret subconscious photoshop advertisement? 😉
I believe it might be a Schucks auto parts store bag. I’ve been up here in this area of Alaska for 2 years now and that’s the only thing I can think of that it could be. Next time I’m in town I’ll take a look and see.
May be this is how Google fights environmental pollution, it wants to show that there are so many plastic bags thrashed they even get wind blown on to it’s street camera! Ban Plastic bags from Alaska, on the other hand do they have a red light district over there?
Actually I retract my last… Just saw a better view of the bag and noticed what looks like an upside down F and O and the S and O… hmmm… don’t know now. But I will keep my eyes peeled.
I don’t think Google should be taking photos of private residents. Remember recently when a couple sued Google about their home’s photo, then when all the GEO type sites linked it, and even social links sites, so now everyone knows where they live, and what their house looks like. Oops!
So how often does Google make the rounds? Will they consider this a challenge, and return more quickly than normal? Will the story become viral, so it backfires on these people wanting privacy like the suing couple?
My guess is that it was a rainy day and they put a plastic bag over the camera to protect it. They just forgot to switch the camera off. We cannot see the bag being put on or taken off because the photos after the two ends of the bag segment are from a different time.
The only thing I can think of is Tesco, but that’s not likely anywhere in North America. Strange…
It could also just be the wind that put the bag there , and the same wind that took it away …
Welcome visitors from Boing Boing!
To everyone – you can now Digg this story if you like.
@Nico – well spotted! It appears I have inadvertently captured my application switcher in the screenshot due to switching too fast…
Nice find! I tend to agree with the non-tin foil hat crowd. Why would anyone care about photos of strip malls??? Although I would be embarrased to be caught at a McDonalds drive thru…
Looks more like ‘Pastic Bag’ to me. 😉
Here’s the where the bag was first put over the cameraon the South side of College Rd
I’m sure if Google had wanted to censor this part of the world … they’d have just left it out, not put a bag over the camera. If it had blown on, it would be highly unlikely to block the entire field of view … and it should be visible in the frame right before it covers the camera – which it isn’t. But the frames around where it first appears where obviously shot on two separate days: One nice and sunny and one with looming clouds and a few spatters of rain. Looking at the bag I’m pretty sure there are large raindrops on it. So it would appear the guy driving the van ‘rainproofed’ his camera … but forgot to turn it off. Although it does seem strange the thing is not rainproof as it is …
I noticed this in Anchorage, which looks like somebody tossed some sort of chain mail garment over the camera:
Re: Alaskan. Shhh… that is a shot of the very rare Delaney Chain faced Salmon trying to mate with the camera.
Very rare.
Hmmm. I don’t recognize this bag from any of the stores here in Fairbanks, and we don’t have that many that print their own bags. Maybe it’s from one of the gas stations. I’m not fancy enough to shop there.
What frustrated me about Google Street View is that they don’t give any notice when they come by, and now my house’s crappy front yard is immortalized.
Why is Google bothering with Alaska anyway when legitimate cities have yet to be mapped for street view?
um, i’m sorry john, “letigimate cities”? wtf?
What’s not legit about the Santa Clause house there in North Pole?
Similar stuff in Anchorage along 36th Avenue between Minnesota and Kathy Estates.
I don’t get it. How can people sabotage the camera? Wouldn’t the people driving the car have to realize that? And even if they did not, and it was just random – I take it then these pictures are not proofed before put online – otherwise wouldn’t they just go back and retake them?
@Joe Siegler – Sorry, I think you got taken in – the sabotage angle isn’t entirely serious 😀
I think it’s generally agreed that the images where the camera has been covered up were taken at different times to the unobscured imagery – perhaps they really were just protecting the camera from the harsh Alaskan weather.
Regardless, given the unimaginably huge amount of data that Google Maps represents, there’s absolutely no way that every last frame could be checked before it goes online – in fact I suspect that hardly any is ever looked at by a human before we see it, which is why so many interesting things are there for us to post about!
It’s us lot that do that checking, and I suspect this story will flag the errors to Google, and maybe they will go back to update those areas one day…
…and maybe the plastic-bag-toting saboteurs will be waiting for them!
I found some scrambled Steetview images on a length of road near Gary Indiana yesterday: nothing as exciting as a carrier bag.
link
Maybe Gary’s just too ugly.
Hmm…
There’s a Schuck’s on College Ave (right near where the car picked it up), and they match the color scheme. I’d wager that they’ve got to be the one.
There’s also an S clearly identifiable in the big print.
(In Fairbanks, there aren’t too many stores to pick from!)
College Road is actually TWICE mapped with picts. On the N-side without the bag and on the S-side with the bag!
On the bit in Gary, we’ve got the same situation, where at the junction where the cover comes on ( View Placemark,,0,6.136221066462873&t=h&ll=41.676374,-87.514172&spn=0.027951,0.058365&z=14 ) we have one set of pictures with looming clouds down the ramp and another set with blue skies North along the road. So it would really seem that the camera’s need to be covered when it rains … and that the drivers sometimes forget to turn the equipment off when they do. Actually along that road there are a couple of spots where the cover is suddenly much lighter than the rest of the time (like here View Placemark,,0,-22.64804595059723&t=h&ll=41.675412,-87.513742&spn=0.027952,0.058365&z=14 ). I wonder if those are flashes of lightning? Whatever they are, you can kind of make out that it’s some kind of fabric hood that covers the camera …
Thought I would link to this…
http://www.flickr.com/groups/616736@N20/pool/
@John – thanks for that, I’d never seen the car in the wild!
I wonder if we can a find a picture of one of these people taking a picture of a street view car on street view?
Er… Or something 😀
Cheers John 😀 Looking at those pictures, the cabling doesn’t look very waterproof … which explains why they need to cover the hardware when it rains. I had always expected the cameras under some kind of dome …
I am surprised that it took so long for someone to get wise to the these google cams.
@Alex: Next best thing? 😀
Hey that’s pretty good Rob, (even if that person is actually taking a picture of Lombard Street, which is right behind the car), so unless you can find the picture she took online, then it doesn’t count! 😀
Could this be a google car in the rain with a bag on the camera?
http://flickr.com/photos/zub/2112482515/
Or this one, when it isn’t raining?
http://flickr.com/photos/anthonut/1304552592/
BTW, speaking about Google Cars : I spotted one (with a Google Map sticker on the door) the other day, and I live in south of France. I’ve seen on the internet they have been spotted in Paris too, as well as across western Europe. Looks like Street View will soon be available to us fellow European 🙂
“The bag remains in place for quite a long way actually – right along College Road, onto the Old Steese Highway and halfway up Minnie Street, where it finally disappears at the junction with Clara Street.”
The bag is also present on part of the Steese Expy, 3rd Street, and for a few feet on 4th Street and Eagle Ave.
Hah, I submitted this a little bit ago, and was rather surprised to see it even got noticed!
From the blue ring and red letters, perhaps it could be an Esso bag?
Two pages of comments about a plastic bag on a car mounted camera!!?? You folks need to get out more and start worrying about things that are important.
Very nice…..I wonder how many people will do this now :o))
Googles photos are way too much for the web!!!1
@ Larry Dart, Perhaps you ought to get out more instead of trolling people on the internet. Oh, how I loved the irony of your comment.
this is most definately a duane reade pharmacy bag http://images.google.com/images?q=duane%20reade&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi
Anything you do outside is public. Get over yourselves. If you wear a funny hat outside people will laugh.
No it’s not. For example if you’re outside and talking with someone you wouldn’t want people to eavesdrop. You’re in public, but you still expect a certain degree of privacy.
Really? You actually waste your life away worrying about this stuff? Who cares if my freakin house can be seen in street view? Really, I’m not that important and neither are you. Get a girlfriend and stop looking for those black helicopters.
Me and a buddy were biking the dalton highway in late july and the google streetview cars passed us about 10 miles north of the arctic circle. Can’t wait to see myself!
Tell you what, let the google rat spy van come anywhere near my home, and watch as I cast stones at it, blow its tires and shoot its occupants, not a problem at all where I live since it’ll be recorded in court as invasion of privacy and civil rights, and self-defence on my part.