Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Wave To Big Brother

While I am not usually a paranoid, conspiracy-driven person, I must say I feel the subtle encroachment of the technocracy when one can view their own home on the Google Street View feature to their mapping software. Read: you are being watched. Well, maybe not you but your house may.

What began as handy street maps - often more relevant than the ones you would spend good money on - with driving directions and distances, has now grown to include satellite imagery and now street scans.

Not everyone is too happy about Google's new toy.

As with many forms of invasive technology, we don't yet know what this may mean to our privacy and safety. Is this unwittingly giving criminals intelligence to select targets more efficiently? Providing them with greater information concerning you and your home? Or worse yet, will those nefarious Girl Scouts now have the tools to send smartly forward their ever-advancing legions of Snickerdoodle Stormtroopers? Calories, girls! Think of the calories!!

Perhaps I'm just being paranoid.

4 comments:

MARILYN A. HUDSON, MLIS said...

Privacy is as much as about vulnerability as anything. I admit to feeling naked when I find an image of my house = and those around it - on a website. For no sure reason. Prospective house buyers? Directionally challenged people who must still have a picture to find the right place? Non-English speaking/reading workers being sent somewhere? (Just find the house that looks like this...). I consider what Google does, and several other similar practices by other groups and agencies - a violation of "my space or personal zone." There once was a reason that phone number were unlisted....now they often give name and address but no phone..."hello stalker we're here!!" What happened to the right to privacy....?

Buck said...

I suppose in some small way it gives us all a taste of what it would be like to be "rich and famous" where photos of your house, your car, and your personal life are bandied about for all to see. We're very quick to say of those people "It's the price you pay." and shrug our shoulders. Perhaps this is just the price we pay for technology and convenience now.

I was surprised to see my house on there some time back since I live in a very small complex that is walled. Yet, there was my house and even my car in the carport! Strange to say the least, but nothing that anyone driving by my home could not see out their car window.

But, I suppose I'm not that paranoid about my front door. I do worry that they will eventually get those overhead shots so clear that you will be able to see my dinner party on my patio. When that happens I'll probably be rather worried.

Cullan Hudson said...

If people like me filled the world, the stalkarazzi would be out of work overnight. Nothing could bore me more than celebrities. But I know the types you speak of. Those for whom "everyone's business is my business" is their mantra. I have to feel a little sad for them. And while I only half jokingly ask about our own personal invasions of privacy, I have to wonder where it will stop. When does enough information cross over into too much information?

J.Griffin said...

"Or worse yet, will those nefarious Girl Scouts now have the tools to send smartly forward their ever-advancing legions of Snickerdoodle Stormtroopers? Calories, girls!
Think of the calories!!

Perhaps I'm just being paranoid."

No,you're not being paranoid.

Excessive calories ARE choking Americans(and thus,America)to death.