Google Spys on America

That is the headline of a Slate article about the new Google “street view” that has actual street level pictures of San Francisco and several other American cities. The service has raised privacy concerns- still, if you can’t afford a trip to San Francisco this is a good virtual alternative.

As Google grows older, it’s becoming that kid who brings an M-80 to
the neighborhood barbecue. While everyone else is goofing off with
sparklers, Google blows up a trash can and freaks out the entire block.
The latest explosion is Google Street View. The free-sushi-eating Googleheads dreamed up the idea to send a camera-equipped van
to take 360-degree shots around the streets of San Francisco, Las
Vegas, New York, Denver, and Miami. Cool, right? Then the service
launched last Tuesday, and Mary Kalin-Casey discovered that she could see her cat Monty in the window of her apartment. If you zoom in, you can tell that Monty is a tabby.

Kalin-Casey expressed her privacy concerns
to the site BoingBoing, and she was joined by a gaggle of commenters
who felt that Google had crossed a line by photographing people’s
homes, cars, and garbage cans. The race was on to find the most
alarming and actionable image. Promising candidates included the two men entering a cannabis club in San Francisco, the interior shot of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (a no-no since 9/11), and the guy standing outside a strip joint.
Google responded with an unassailable position: “Street View only
features imagery taken on public property and is not real time. This
imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see
walking down the street.” Google provides a page to report images that
should be removed. The company also worked with domestic-violence
shelters to keep those places private.

What Street View
demonstrates is the magnifying effect of technology, especially Google
technology. People drive by the Stanford campus every day and see
attractive co-eds searching for the optimum tanning angle. But when
those same co-eds are captured by the Google camera,
the men of the Web go a little crazy and 100 links to the “Girls of
Escondido Road” bloom. Or, let’s say you are driving down the road and
see a shirtless dude with a backward baseball cap urinating by the
speed-limit sign. Probably not the most enjoyable sight in the world.
Through the magic of Google, though, a star is born. (Update: The image has been taken down, but can be seen here.) No naked women standing in windows have been uncovered yet, despite some serious effort.