Google Maps Spy Feature
Posted on May 31, 2007 by C Johnson
Culture, Tech
Being a woefully amateur photographer, I have a plethora of pictures that feature either my thumb planted firmly in the offset or askew angled shots of city streets and random passing pedestrians. Whether inadvertently (like me) or purposefully (like photographer Roger Mayne) the fact is we’ve all taken pictures of strangers going about their daily lives. I’m very sure that I’m in someone’s holiday photos somewhere, looking thoroughly ridiculous in the background, and I certainly have many a photo where I’ve caught the innocent passerby doing something embarrassing, thereby entering them into infamy… at least amongst myself and my friends.
Does this mean that I’ve invaded their privacy? Because I’ve taken pictures of them without their consent?
An interesting slew of comments arose on Boing-Boing yesterday that addressed, in essence, that same thing. A Boing Boing user was highly unsettled to find that the Google Maps zoom feature could zoom all the way into her living room front window, quite vividly capturing her tabby cat on its perch. One really can’t attack the user for being upset by this as all of us have varying definitions of what privacy means to us. Personally, growing up in a place where the average citizen is caught on CCTV up to 300 times a day makes the fact that my front window can be seen on Google Maps about as shocking as the next episode of Lost.
Privacy is an extinct fossil from a much simpler time. No one in this digital age can live a completely private life, whether they like it or not—it’s a cold, hard fact of modern life. So maybe we should all just get over it and get used to it. Because, really, unless someone is sneaking into your house with a hidden camera about their person, your privacy isn’t being threatened anymore than anyone else’s is. (And if you are worried about someone using Google Maps to see you undress in your living room, for heaven’s sake, try changing clothes in your bedroom like every other normal person on the planet!)
Comments
Leave a Reply
