p2pnet - rss feed: Google the Peeping Tom
p2pnet.net news: - Google’s satellite country views are being supplemented with selected 360 degree panoramic street-level map shots of various US cities.
But the news is being greeted by alarm, in some parts. How’d you like to find someone over in the UK peering into your front window?
It could happen, though, as Calfornia apartment block manager Mary Kalin-Casey has already discovered.
She and her husband, John, were, “a bit shaken” when they tried out Google’s Street View.
“She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building,” says The New York Times, but, “As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment. ‘The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,’ Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. ‘The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged’.”
Street Maps is looking more like Candid Camera, says the Belfast Telegraph.
“In San Francisco, there is a man picking his nose on a street corner; at Stanford University, there are a couple sunbathing in bikinis; in Miami, there is a group of protesters carrying signs outside an abortion clinic. “And in other cities, you can see men entering adult book stores or leaving strip clubs.”
Wired is using Google’s Street View for a competition asking readers for their favourite candid pix, like the one on the upper right which shows a couple of Stanford University sunbathers taking in the rays at Arguello Mall.
Meanwhile, “People’s jobs are pretty public,” Kalin-Casey told the NYT. “But that doesn’t mean they want a shot of their sofa on Google.”
She’s asked Google to remove the image of her building’.
Also See:
360 degree panoramic - Google takes to the streets, May 30, 2007
The New York Times - Google Zooms In Too Close for Some, May 31, 2007
Belfast Telegraph - Privacy fears over new Google ‘Street View’, June 2, 2007
Wired - Request for Urban Street Sightings: Submit and Vote on the Best Urban Images Captured by New Google Maps Tool, May 30, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:57 am
This getting very interesting. Check this guys page out:
http://www.laudontech.com/StreetView/streetview.html
There are over 100 sightings posted ranging from illegal activities to hot cars to UFO’s.
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 am
1. “IF the Government were doing this, people would be outraged.”
No. Governments DO this type of shit already, routinely. Nobody gives a shit. Unless you — like the mainstream — compulsively suck government cock, you’re branded as a “subversive anarchist”.
2. “Where do you draw the line between public and private?”
Ask the women who get hassled over whether they’re “permitted” to (for example) do their housework in the nude. You can ALREADY be hassled — “legally” — by our fun pals from various Governments, simply because people might be able to see “innapropriate” things through your windows.
Google is NOT the problem here. Technology is not the problem. The existance of Governments IS. If you’re panicked by someone being able to see your goddamn books on your bookshelf, move the fucking things out of the line-of-site of your windows.
(stupid cunt.)