IP Democracy: Google Street Views: Creepy But Not Illegal

The blogosphere has been chewing on an intriguing new offering by Google’s mapping service, Street Views, and debating whether the images created by the option violate privacy. It all started when a woman pointed out that Street Views, which, as the term implies, augments Google Maps with street-level photos of various locations, presented a photo of her apartment that clearly depicted her cat, Monty, in the window.

The race is now on to find photos that capture people in compromising, weird or mundane situations (taking out the trash, for example). Although creepy, Street Views is not a violation of privacy because the photos are taken on public property. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street,” according to a Google spokesperson.

That’s true. The images may not be any different from what you or I might capture if we roamed city streets with a high-speed rotating camera. But how many people do this or have ever done this? It’s one thing to take random snapshots in public places but it’s a whole different kettle of fish when a big company systematically creates a detailed photographic record of public place activities and makes it widely available on a mass scale.

Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with what Google is doing, but it does raise all kinds of issues. Can the photos be used by law enforcement as “probable cause” in seeking warrants? Can they be used as evidence in a court of law period?

The fact that the images are “frozen” can create all kinds of interpretations of what is going on in the particular scene. People are already speculating that this San Francisco man might be trying to break into an apartment. It sure looks like he is, which is damning evidence. In fact, he may have any one of a million innocent reasons to be doing what he is doing. Might a suspicious spouse view what could be an innocent embrace (a casual street encounter, for example) between her husband and a colleague and go postal nevertheless? The questions are endless.

How is Google capturing all these images? It uses a service (as well as other “sources”) called Immersive Media which relies on a 360-degree camera mounted on a moving vehicle.

The good news (for some) is that Street Views currently captures pictures only in selected cities — theSan Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami — but other cities are slated for the service later this year. The bad news (for Google) is that Street Views is bound to only inflame groups, such as the EU, that are already worried that the search and web advertising giant already knows far too much about us as it is.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 1, 2007 12:26 PM to IP Democracy