Re:Germany: New government plans 'right to encryption'
by felixhammerl on Sunday December 05, 2021 @06:34AM
(#29448512)
Google knew that what they might be able to claim had a very shaky legal foundation, not even taking the public backlash into account. But there is a big difference between taking a picture and taking billions of pictures, analyzing them, and putting them into a publicly accessible database. German courts are not at all dogmatic in the way they interpret the law, because a law written long back might need to be reinterpreted today in the light of new technologies or societal developments.
As I recall there was no legal obligation from Google to blur houses. They did so to calm this hot-button political topic.
At least back then there was the Panoramafreiheit which basically allowed you to take pictures in any public area without aids(e.g. a ladder or stick). For this reason they had to lower the height of the cameras for Germany to fall under this clause I think. I also think the legal situation changes quite a bit since this was last broadly discussed.