‘OUR HOUSE in the middle of the web,’ sang one wag trying to stop the Google cameras from entering the village of Broughton near Milton Keynes. Not everyone is so keen to see his or her front door, rubbish bins and road stuck on the net for everyone to see.
It may be that an Englishman’s home is his castle but there is no drawbridge or moat to protect you from the car with the Google 360° camera perched on its roof. We are being watched, mapped and invaded.
But one country has defiantly said “No!”. Maybe it’s not surprising given its past that the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (HDPA) in Greece has refused Google cars entry into their land until they can prove that the pavement eye view of our everyday world is not a threat to national security and privacy. I’m with them. Wasn’t so long ago in Europe that we were causing confusion to invading forces by taking down street signs and putting up misleading signposts.
Now if I were a burglar, the first place I would look is on Google Earth to map my getaway and the second, would be Google street to spot the webcams, alarms, dangerous dog signs, fences, hedges and gates. We are making the life of those who want to break into our homes very easy indeed.
Arguably it’s good to be able to armchair travel and see 360°panoramas of famous sites, arguably it’s useful to be able to look at the road where you might want to buy a house, it’s helpful to have a look at a destination you are going to for a holiday or a meeting. But a level of intrusion that shows number plates on cars and faces on streets, despite assurances that these will be blurred, and the personal ephemera of someone’s rubbish bin is more than curiosity: it is intrusion.
Google maintains that it operates within the law and that it only takes photos from public areas, places where webcams already might operate. It argues that estate agents and Jo Public can already take pictures of any building and publish it on the web. They have a point. But what makes their service different is its accessibility and comprehensive coverage. They hope eventually to have the whole world in their hands, as another song goes.
All of us can be ogled by Google, doing whatever we happen to be doing at that particular moment when the shutter clicks. This has been highly embarrassing caught-on-camera moment for some: urinating in public, being arrested, skinny dipping, or simply being somewhere where they shouldn’t be. There are means to remove your image from the site but the point is that you have to be the proactive one.
There are those that say we live in a surveillance society, that knowing we are being watched will make us behave more responsibly. But I doubt that will be the case, I think we will simply go on doing the same old, same old… it’s just that we have to be prepared that peeping toms who used to hide behind hedges and look out of their windows will simply be twitching the internet rather than the net curtains.
Personally, I prefer my privacy, but if they do have to film us at least Google could warn us when they are coming, the mind boggles when imagining what fun could be had.
