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 at 12:26 PM | Print | Comments (1)As I mentioned yesterday, mesh, “Canada’s Web Conference,” was terrifically fun. I couldn’t stay for the full two days, much to my regret, but Day One was filled with interesting panels, including the opening interview with Mike Arrington.
Two other observations. First, for whatever reason, Canada, despite its very high broadband penetration, is about 18 months behind the U.S. in the development and adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and advanced Internet applications. Or at least that’s what the mostly Canadian group of attendees had to say.
Perhaps that’s why mesh is such a big success and why the attendees seemed to me unusually eager to gain knowledge and solicit advice.
Secondly, either by design or happenstance (and I tend to think the former is true), everybody at mesh was very bright and, even better, fun-loving. Although the panel discussions were serious, the atmosphere was relaxed and enjoyable, right down to the speaker gifts. Loren Feldman posted a video of Mike Arrington showing off the…underwear that the male speakers received.
The female speakers also received underwear as a speaker gift, but for some reason the mesh organizers decided to give women briefs (not boy briefs, but regular men’s briefs) as their speaker gifts. Male speakers got boxers. (Both were supplied by promotional premium company Right Sleeve Marketing, and the underwear is definitely giving Right Sleeve a promotional lift.)
If only all tech, Internet and media conferences could be run with the same sense of humor, we’d all become even more conference-crazy that we already are.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:43 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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