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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

> Tate Modern had high hopes for the 10th floor of the Blatnavik Building with its cafe and a four-sided observation terrace with excellent views of the Thames. Alas it also had great views into the apartments at Neo Bankside whose residents ultimately sued and won, thus if you arrive by lift today you can only visit the cafe.

I was curious about what type of arguments you could make to win a case like this.

"The Supreme Court commented that the degree of overlooking from visitors to the Tate gallery was so extreme it subjected the residents to being “much like being on display in a zoo” and held that there is no reason why constant visual intrusion cannot give rise to liability for nuisance."

https://www.tlt.com/insights-and-events/insight/supreme-cour...

Really strange take, that applies to so many situations where tourists gather

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Supreme Court judges do not express "takes". They make legal judgements and express legal opinion based on years of experience and deep knowledge of the law. They deserve a bit more respect than a likening to some random Redditor having a "take"

You're describing what a take is... It's not a reddit term. A supreme court isn't a holy entity that requires special deference or language when talking about their activity. What a ridiculous reaction

Note that this comment does not apply to every country.

Good thing the post is about the UK and we here are capable of staying on topic

And? We have countless examples of Supreme Court and other judges twisting laws beyond recognition. Just look at all the crazy stuff that invokes the commerce clause which is obviously not what anyone who wrote it ever intended or anyone who reads it to expect.

Supreme Court rulings should be the most highly scrutinized and criticized of all legal rulings, and include the ethical and moral implications behind them.

It affected rich people, wouldn't surprise me if one of them knew the judge.

The case was a very big deal in London. The outcome was not one of bias, but complicated circumstance.

The apartment building was built years before the Tate Modern opened their viewing floor. After the Tate Modern viewing floor opened, visitors to the Tate Modern began photographing and videoing and watching people in the neighbouring apartment building.

The judge reasonably determined that there is some sacrifice of privacy made when choosing to live in a glass apartment building, but the Tate Modern's viewing floor's compromise of privacy was so egregious that it should not be allowed regardless of planning permission.

There are many buildings all over London that look over one another, many of those occupied by very very rich people, it was not corruption.

However, Tate got the permission to build the viewing deck before the apartments were built.

After the apartments had been granted planning permission. Apartments came first, no matter what mental gymnastics you engage in.

Absolutely, it's just somewhat wild they got permission to build the deck.

How can privacy be egregiously violated? Isn’t it just you have a window to look in or not? And every building has windows to look in if you choose to not draw the blinds?

If I secretly hide a camera in your bedroom, would the violation of privacy be made more egregious if I then went ahead and broadcast that footage on TV?

>Isn’t it just you have a window to look in or not? And every building has windows to look in if you choose to not draw the blinds?

For example, there would be a pretty big difference between my neighbour being able to see into my apartment and my neighbour organising tour groups to look into my apartment.

I don't mind my neighbour, it is reasonable to expect that my neighbours will be able to see into my apartment. I however could not reasonably expect that my neighbours would host some sort of organised viewing activity on a regular basis.

Well maybe don’t live in a city if you don’t want people to see in your house? I mean seriously floor to ceiling windows.. what the f do you expect?

I don't mind people seeing into my flat. I would very much mind the specific, egregious behaviour described in the court case.

Which is exactly why you wouldn’t build your house with floor to ceiling windows next to a museum.

The museum only decided to start encouraging the egregious behavior after the flats were built. The museum knew the egregious behavior by their guests was taking place and did not intervene until forced to do so by the courts.

I really don't see how you can read through the court judgements and not arrive at the conclusion that the Tate just really went out of their way to look cartoonishly evil.

You are saying that the Tate specifically encouraged people to take pictures of those flats? The text you linked me to does not say that.

I'm not saying the Tate specifically encouraged people to take pictures of those flats.

I'm saying the Tate encouraged people to take pictures of those flats. They put up a viewing platform where the flats were one of the main events.

So building a balcony makes you cartoonishly evil?

It's the way they acted after they became aware of the problem that makes them look cartoonishly evil.

Actually, sounds like they had a much better solution than moving out of the city: they appealed to a judge, who agreed with them. Sounds like you’re the one out of step with reality here.

Isn't it on the individuals occupying the apartment to use curtains of some sort if they don't want to be seen? Unless I'm missing context the museum didn't organize tour groups to specially look into the apartments

> Isn't it on the individuals occupying the apartment to use curtains of some sort if they don't want to be seen?

Sure, but the problem here was explicitly not the individuals occupying the apartments being seen.

>Unless I'm missing context the museum didn't organize tour groups to specially look into the apartments

From the court ruling: "Visitors in the viewing gallery frequently look into the claimants' flats and take photographs, and less frequently view the claimants and their flats with binoculars."

"Photographs of the flats are posted on social media by visitors. On the platform Instagram there were 124 posts in the period between June 2016 and April 2018"

I do not think it's acceptable to subject anyone to this, be they rich or poor.

I did read that part, I still do not see how that justifies closing the museum terrace. The people photographing and sharing online pictures from the flat isn’t on the museum. Make the museum forbid to take pictures from the terrace if that’s the main source of concern. The museum didn’t create the terrace with the intent to showcase the inside of the flats as far as I can tell, it seems they had the permit to build it before the building existed.

Of course it's on the museum, this was an entirely predictable outcome.

And, as I understand it, it was the Tate's initial failure to do anything to restrain their visitors that caused the Supreme Court to decide as they did.

It's worth noting that it has since re-opened - but access to the side directly overlooking the flats is restricted, and there are now signs asking visitors not to take intrusive photos: https://www.timeout.com/london/news/the-tate-modern-has-reop...

Also why not just add privacy film to all the windows?

Why did Tate not reach out to the apartment owners and pay for privacy film installation before they opened the viewing platform?

Curtains were invented several hundred years ago because of this issue.

I didn't know they had instagram and smartphones back then, those were key elements here.

This was a decision made by five supreme court justices in a 3/2 split, do you have any particular reason to believe there has been corruption involved in this UK litigation?

No need for that. It’s England, preferential treatment depends more on your social class than who you know, in such cases. Knowing powerful people definitely can help in some contexts, but the judiciary is well insulated in that respect.

Come on, this was just gross by Tate and the supreme court was right to put a stop to it. I visited the extension before it opened, it was obvious this was going to be a problem.

A busy viewing terrace is not an ordinary use of space, building one looking right into private homes isn't cool regardless of how wealthy the residents of those homes are.

I am looking at this building on the map and it is surrounded by water, hotels, and restaurants. That doesn’t seem like a pure residential area to me. If you don’t want public to see in your house don’t live next to a museum? This is rich people problems and that’s why it lost like 4 times before somehow winning the final. 100 rich people or 10k museum visitors. Hmmmm who should we prioritize.

> If you don’t want public to see in your house don’t live next to a museum?

That's simply not what the court case was about. I pasted a bit from the ruling in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48345234

Every viewing terrace in cities I've been to have a view that lets you see in other people apartment. That's pretty much expected in cities, if you have large glass windows people can see you, and that's why curtains exist. I don't really see how the terrace is the issue here.

I'm looking at the pictures in this article and that doesn't seem egregious: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64481260

>I'm looking at the pictures in this article and that doesn't seem egregious: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64481260

That's just a function of the lenses being used. The distance is 34 metres, you could see very well into the flats.

I've been on the viewing platform, you had a very good view into the rather nice looking flats. Most people who came on the platform spent a good chunk of time staring at those flats, because they happen to be one of the more interesting things to view from the platform.

You might be surprised to find out how few people on the very progressive r/london subreddit were upset by this supreme court decision, probably because they were actually familiar with the situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/10qqey4/flat_owners...

Are we reading the same reddit thread? It looks like most of the people in the comments are against the decision.

Can’t all tall buildings see into neighboring buildings? I’ve often seen into peoples houses and watched them eat dinner etc.

Yes? That wasn't the complaint.

Do you have 20+ people looking into your home all day long, taking photos and posting them on instagram?

  Visitors in the viewing gallery frequently look into the claimants' flats and take
  photographs, and less frequently view the claimants and their flats with binoculars.
  Photographs of the flats are posted on social media by visitors. On the platform
  Instagram there were 124 posts in the period between June 2016 and April 2018. It has
  been estimated that those posts reached an audience of 38,600. Mann J found that
  there was a significant number of people using the viewing gallery who demonstrated
  a visual interest in the interiors of the flats, including by looking, peering in, taking
  photographs and waving to the occupants. He accepted that their numbers and the
  level of interest were such that a homeowner would reasonably regard this as intrusive
  so far as the use of the south side of the viewing gallery was concerned (by contrast,
  the western side of the viewing gallery is at an oblique angle to the flats, offering only
  a limited view into them).

(This goes on and on, and at no point does it sound any better for Tate)

I think it would be slightly different if you built and advertised a viewing gallery for that purpose.

British people don't have curtains?

Not really, it’s very common in the UK to not having curtains or closed curtains even if you live on the street level. You can walk in a town and literally watch TV through the windows.

In a tall apartment / skyscraper I bet not more than 10% ever have or close their curtain. Also they paid those prices to look at that view so they want to do that. (A flat there is £1-5M)

> You can walk in a town and literally watch TV through the windows.

Only if you have a license, right?

Curtains open, telly blaring and the big light on. You could be on any street in Britain.

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