With regard to the basic purpose of Street View, I think there are major differences as to how it’s judged in different countries, Most Americans-- maybe I could say North Americans to include Canada and Mexico, couldn’t care less that their streets and houses are being photographed. If they’re photographing the whole street, and all the houses in it, then they’re not singling out me and my house, and so I don’t see any reason to object, aside from special circumstance which I don’t think I need to spell out.
But in other cultures the people may feel that you need permission to even look at someone’s house, let alone photograph it. The applicability of panoramfreiheit–the legality of photographing private property visible from public areas-- varies quite a lot.
Some countries like Greece have banned Street View outright; some others, like Germany, make it so difficult to implement and maintain that it’s next to useless. Google has given up trying to extend or update its coverage in Germany, yet Street View still isn’t explicitly illegal there. Or last I heard.
TBH I don’t have much sympathy for those who don’t secure their networks. If anyone trawls data off your network because you didn’t set up a Wi-Fi password, that looks like a “you” problem.
Street View was available again in Greece in 2014 or so and in Germany last year. It looks like Google is currently collecting image data in both countries. Both have relatively fresh imagery to at least the 2022-2023 range.
Apple Map’s Look Around feature, which is basically a slicker version of Street View, is also available in Greece and Germany, FWIW.
I think it’s just nationalism, and varying ideas about digital regulation and applying laws to the internet.
Didn’t the US just try to ban Huwei and TikTock for various questionable national security reasons? And Canada recently banned hyperlinks to news sites, as I understand it, which frankly baffles me. The great firewalls of China and Russia have been in place for what, decades now? Brazil recently banned Twitter, and Starlink is upsetting censorship schemes in the third world.
The freewheeling anarchy of the 80s and 90s internet is gone, and now politicians the world over are staking their claims. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
I don’t think that’s quite what happened - my understanding is that Canada passed a law that would require Facebook etc to pay news outlets for linking to their articles. And Meta (Facebook and Instagram) does not want to pay for linking to articles and therefore people in Canada cannot see news content *. Especially since it means that Facebook would have to compensate the Toronto Star for content it posted on its own Facebook page.
* There are ways around it for ordinary people - my understanding is that if I put a link into a comment on a post rather than making a standalone post someone in Canada will be able to use the link to get to the NYT or whatever.