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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Village mob thumps Google Street View car |
| 2009-04-03 |
| A spate of burglaries in a Buckinghamshire village had already put residents on the alert for any suspicious vehicles. So when the Google Street View car trundled towards Broughton with a 360-degree camera on its roof, villagers sprang into action. Forming a human chain to stop it, they harangued the driver about the “invasion of privacy”, adding that the images that Google planned to put online could be used by burglars. As police made their way to the stand-off, the Google car yielded to the villagers. For now, Broughton remains off the internet search engine’s mapping service. It was Paul Jacobs who provided the first line of resistance. “I was upstairs when I spotted the camera car driving down the lane,” he said. “My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime.” He then ran round the village knocking on doors to rouse fellow residents. While the police were called, the villagers stood in the road, not allowing the car to pass. The driver eventually did a U-turn and left. Mr Jacobs said: “This is an affluent area. We’ve already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it’s an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police.” Google Street View, which was introduced in Britain last month, gives 360-degree views of the biggest cities, allowing people to take virtual tours from their computers or mobile phones. The company’s camera-equipped cars, which take the photographs for Street View, aim to cover as much of Britain as possible. Readers of Times Online were asked recently where they had spotted the Street View car, and in the past couple of weeks people have seen them in Winchester, Preston, Chelmsford and Ipswich. It is thought that the Google car that tried to enter Broughton had come from photographing roads in near by Milton Keynes. Google said that its car had been using public roads and was not breaking the law. A spokesman said: “We provide an easy way to request removal of imagery. Most requests are processed within hours.” Pictures removed include that of a man leaving a sex shop. Privacy International, a pressure group, has begun legal action against the company in an effort to bring down the mapping service. |
| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #6 There is a difference between the government having to have a warrant to enter your home and a right to privacy. The government can't know what's really happening in your home without entry, thus privacy. It may guess, it may believe, but it can not know without direct examination which violates privacy. Thus the need for warrant, and in theory, probable cause. You're playing linguist games. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-04-03 22:30 |
| #5 There is a difference between the government having to have a warrant to enter your home and a right to privacy. Otherwise the right of privacy wouldn't have needed to be created from the emanations and penumbras of the Constitution. Nor would the fourth amendment have been sufficient to make abortion a constitutional right. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2009-04-03 18:33 |
| #4 Afraid somebody will catch them picking their noses. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-04-03 17:57 |
| #3 The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. - Fourth Amendment That implies privacy in one's home unless the agent of the state can produce a warrant. That's not a 20th Century creation. What is a 20th Century creation is the various tangential extensions of that beyond that original intent. What brought anonymity [vice privacy] was the development of true cities feed by both rural and international immigration creating a social environments that meant that there weren't enough official or unofficial regulators of social norm to impose their standards on everyone. If you look at the very issue of 'how can something that is obviously in public be private' it comes down to anonymity, not privacy. There's a lawyer cult dedicated to making sure you don't understand the difference between the two. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-04-03 09:27 |
| #2 It makes a lot of sense in a historical context. Until the industrial revolution with the rise of capitalism and large cities, people had very little privacy. Consider that there is no right to privacy in the Bill of Rights. It was a judicial creation of the early 20th century. The revolutions of the 19th century brought the anonymity of the large crowd. Bergson condemned this anomie. But people liked it. It finally gave them freedom in their daily lives from the ruling elites, whether spinster busybodies or self-righteous ministers. The networking of the world on the internet threatens the privacy people have gained. They don't want to give it up. The Google Street View vehicle is one of the few physical manifestations of the network they can attack. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2009-04-03 09:04 |
| #1 Man, these idiots really don't understand the difference between public and private. And how the hell is a picture of your house on the internet an aid to burglars? This makes no sense at all. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2009-04-03 08:42 |