Thursday, May 31, 2007

Has Google Street View Gone Too Far?


Ok, so you may have already heard and seen examples of the NEW Google Street View feature on Google Maps. For those of you that have not seen this feature it basically gives you a streets eye view of a particular destination on Google Maps. If the location that you enter has an associated image, you can see in EXTREME detail what is around (360 degrees) that location. The question here is has Google gone too far with the images that they have made available?

With people already complaining about cities putting up cameras on streets to watch for illegal activity, here we have Google displaying on the internet; people, car number plates, street details, houses, banks in extreme detail. Now you do not need to visit a city to get a feel for the layout of particular streets (very terroristic friendly) etc…

Some of the images that are available are quite revealing. You have already seen the lady jogging, how about the guy standing outside an adult theatre!!! See here… Is he just passing, leaving or about to enter? He’ll have a bit of difficulty explaining this to his partner… If the link did not work, just eneter the following into the Google Maps search box '812 larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94109, USA'

So what do you think? Is this invasion of our privacy? Or is it OK because it is just Google?

Why not check out your street to see if it has made into Google Street View. Not every destination will be in there, but check it out and see what you can find.

Source: The Drudge Report

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No they have not. It is remarkable how the technophobes are ruining it for everyone in this country.

Ginseng said...

"Terroristic friendly"? Why not learn how to write in this grand English language of ours before spouting off such rabble-rousing rhetoric?

And, no, this does not disturb me, nor should it any rational person. There are hidden cameras recording our every move in most public streets. Why is there this ridiculous, somewhat comical uproar over Google posting snapshots taken from a passing car? It's not like I can look up my home address and see what Mr. Peters is doing next door today. I can look up my home address and there's the vaguest chance I might catch him if he happened to have been in view of a camera the one time Google drove by last year.

This is profoundly, deeply silly.