For one thing, it doesn't looked like Google/Android did this at all. As others have said, it looks like someone has falsely contributed to the map and got past the review. Such an examples is pointed out by andrea_s here[1] (it is around the same area as the original link).
If it were believed that this was an official work by Android, I bet the comments would be much different. However, as it does not look official, the comments in this article cannot be compared to the comments on an article relating to what you describe.
Google published it. Whether it was a paid employee or volunteer vandal doesn't really make the organization look worse or better.
(Personally, I don't see any reason to be outraged about it, and wouldn't be surprised if they don't see this as a reason to even bother about their review process. If it is a volunteer they will ban them, if it is an employee they will hopefully explain that they don't get to make a similar error of judgement again, or perhaps fire them.)
and there is a Skype logo too http://goo.gl/jOk19o and a happy face http://goo.gl/Z4AHB6
It looks like a user had enough reputation to add things without review.
Though my excuse at least is that "Apple is known for their massive review process and locking down of everything - this can only be intentional" if it was Apple.
It's more an expectation from the company - I wouldn't even be fully surprised if it was a cheeky Google employee who did it. Would probably get laughs as PR frowns and makes the map team remove it.
> how they need massive amounts of fuel to get off from earth
I don't think this is the case. Consider the flight that 'Coop' keeps dreaming about at the start of the movie. Seems he was piloting one of the shuttles into Earth orbit but encountered an anomaly which messed things up.
I'm sure the Swiss do, but just an aside that plenty of EU countries allow members from other countries to vote in their elections. E.g. here in Ireland I think we only restrict constitutional referenda to Irish citizens.
It seems it does vary heavily by country [1]. My country (Romania) does not give any voting rights to foreigners (AFAIK), and I thought the US didn't either.
The Guardian just goes down and down in my estimation with each click-bait article on tech. I get it, you don't like the software industry, SV, 'disruption' and have a big axe to grind.
Is it just me who's noticing it, or how do other HN regulars feel about this (not this particular article, but it is the latest one I've seen)? I'll arrive home this evening to my housemate quoting this opinion piece, I just know it. Ugh.
I dunno, it's hard not find something to agree with, particularly the rather tone deaf "let them eat soylent".
I regularly read the Guardian, and it seems they are very tech positive in general, it's just the SV culture they (and it has to be said, many people outside of SV) find distasteful.
Totally agree. Seems he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, by frequently mentioning "software engineering" in quotes.
And as someone who had the grave misfortune of having some experience in scientific code, all I can do is laugh at the OP's link. Yeah sure, scientist's are great at programming. I say let them off at it, because I want nothing to do with it. I value my sanity too much :)
"A proposition for a standard digital signature in every EU citizen's identity card.
....
No extra cards - it will just replace your existing ID card when it expires"
Well unlike most of the continent, Britain and Ireland have no mandatory I.D. card (thankfully) so this doesn't cover the whole EU...
I allways wondered about the aversion to id-cards. Doubly when I heard the story about catch-22 style schenigans I heard you need to go through in GB, if you want to open a bank account, and rent a flat at the same time (or so I heard, that most of the time bank accepts as proof of identity utility bills from place where you live, and landlord accepts similarily a proof of existence of a bank account) ... in czech republic I just show them my id card, and everyybody is hapy. I could even pay a little bit extra to have digital signature embedded, which would allow me to fill my taxes via web ...
A lot of things end up being tied to your ID number, and it becomes very difficult to limit the collaboration of companies to create a dataset about you, never mind making it easier for the Government to track people en masse.
Lack of ID card doesn't stop UK to share all your data with private companies, like in case of care.data and now also HMRC data. I never felt as tracked as in UK, where all companies know where I live and lived for last several yers.
On the other hand in Poland we do have mandatory ID card, and companies still don't have that much access to your data.
I'll have to break it to you then: it's exceedingly easy to get the same use of data without an ID. The lack of national ID does not protect your privacy.
The feeling of protection hinges on how easy it is. A bit over ten years ago I was working in database "cleaning": merging databases from different organizations[1] into one coherent dataset. The data volumes were large, but other than that it is a simple task with low error rates and one which absolutely does not need global unique IDs.
This was ten years ago. The task only got easier since then.
On the flip side, the lack of national ID has inconveniences. How do you authenticate yourself when selling your house?
[1] Ethical work. These were needed either after mergers or because of the MS Access syndrome, where every department designed their own customer database.
Definitely the same in the UK. It's likely the death of Blair/Brown's <s>citizen tracking</s>ID card scheme killed the idea for other countries considering one.
Case in point: HMRC (UK Taxman) is about to sell 'anonymized' taxpayer data. With enough 'anonymized' data-dumps and CPU power, at some point, it will become trivial to correlate an ID Card ID with datapoints.
In countries where you have ID card, you just show it to confirm your identity and you're done.
In UK you need to bring your bank statement and utility bills, with your address. Combined with your date of birth, it makes it much easier to match with companies database.
Same issue as with SSN in the USA. Lots of things requesting it what should not ever have access to it, opening people up to everything from privacy intrusion to identity fraud.
I wear a tinfoil hat because governments have a history of abusing their powers. Although we live in steady and somewhat well-governed democracies, there's no guarantee that this will always be the case.
U'll join in with the chorus and point out that this point of view is an outdated relic of the national identity card debates of the 80s and 90s. Back then it was possible to imagine a world where we weren't tracked permanently. With the advent of ubiquitous mobile phones, the Web (with cookies!), public transport electronic passes, license plate readers for cars, face recognition linked with CCTV networks, that era has gone. In my opinion, if we can't have privacy, then we should at least get some of the potential benefits that are possible when privacy is removed, and national ID cards give you just that.
Finland doesn't have a mandatory ID card either, but you've been able to get an electronic ID like the one described for quite a while if you want one.
It has tax records, which have a link to my NHS records. My tax number isn't used for anything aside from taxes, though, and only organisations which have to report tax-related information about me to the Government have it.
Since I don't really understand the local sentiment of the Irish and the British, I gotta ask, do the people think it's a good think that there isn't a central Primary Key to link all of their records together?
In my country, a lot of places use the National ID card (NIC) as a means of security. For example at a lot of office buildings or at "extra-secure" neighbourhoods (especially where military personnel live), they ask you to leave your NIC (or a copy of it) at the gate. So in case of an incident, they would have a record of who checked in and stuff.
Another security use case is in Banks. Since handwritten signatures are weak security, they usually ask you to attach a copy of your NIC when cashing/depositing cheques so they can trace the guy later in case of unlawful activity.
Yes yes, all above measures have loopholes but it's still security. I m just saying that ID cards aren't all bad. they have their uses.
So each govt body seems to have it's own persona of you. While I understand that this in some way supports privacy against the govt, but it just makes me wonder how they handle certain issues. off the top of my head:
Aren't your passport or driving license connected to your other persona's?
If someone gets arrested, wouldn't that be tied to some existing Primary Key? How else would you know past criminal records of a person?
Do all the bodies simply work on "Foreign Keys" since there is no central Primary Key? And if all records have each other's foreign keys, doesn't that defeat the purpose?
It sort of defeats the purpose, but because these are across organisational boundaries, it makes it rather more difficult for anyone to actually do anything with those links, and more expensive. A national ID system leads to a national database where much of this data would be much more accessible to the entire Government.
oooooh boy. Might want to do some research before your holiday to Belfast (or Derry).
Edit -
I realize that came off snarky - it was meant lightheartedly. In all seriousness, though -
Republic of Ireland - a soverign nation of 26 counties. Split from the UK nearly a century ago. There's some interesting (but very painful) history behind that.
Northern Ireland - 6 counties at the northeast of the island
Ireland - a geographical entity (the island itself)
Ireland (or Eire) - the official name of the Republic
Great Britain - the island with England, Scotland, and Wales. Often used to refer to the UK (but this isn't completely accurate, if we're being pedantic it's a geographical, not political, term, and there's still Northern Ireland).
United Kingdom - England, Scotland (for now), Wales, and Northern Ireland
It would make sense for me to make an error in there, but I think I've got that right. Hope it's helpful!
What a joke. So you have no DL, no passport, you don't have any bank accounts or credit cards, no internet account or phone account, no national health insurance account, and no address?
Thats great! Since you're not required to have an ID card then you can't be identified and your privacy is secure.
Also you're homeless, probably destitute and unable to live or participate in society.
In the UK, one does not need government approval or permission to live in a house, so it's quite possible not to be homeless and also not to have government ID. Crazy times.
You miss my point entirely. If you have an address you have a unique identifier which is shared widely, usually publicly. You therefore you can be easily identified.
And do I need to present that address to interact with society? If a policeman stops me in the streets, can he demand to see my address for no reason at all? Is it now, or will it one day be illegal for me not to carry that address around with me?
The problem isn't that it's possible to identify people. This is something that can be done, for example, by looking at someone. The problem is in the relationship between the state and the citizen.
