Archive for the ‘street view’ tag
Virtual snooping
Previously I’d made my opinion clear on the privacy aspect of Google Street View – in that essentially Google hasn’t done anything that can’t be done by any ordinary person with a camera walking past your house. If you don’t want to be seen playing air guitar in your wife’s underwear, simply close the curtains. Or just don’t do it.
Since then, and on a seemingly unrelated note, the BBC News website has reported on a body being dumped in a wheelie bin in Cobham, Surrey. It caught my eye because it’s not a million miles away from where I live (though not too close for comfort, I admit). The BBC News article carries a photo of the front of the house in question, guarded by police; and while the article itself attempts to protect the nearby residents’ privacy by mentioning only the name of the road, this is already too much information.
And this is where the two cross paths. With just a little effort – the road isn’t very long, and Google is quite a powerful engine – the property can be seen on Google Street View, complete with the unobscured number plate of the car on the drive. Google approximates the address at 16 Hamilton Avenue. Whether this is correct matters very little – the perception is that it might be correct. And that the car on the drive might be involved. It’s irrelevant that the Google Street View car may have driven down that road in the distant past, because information, like statistics, can be misused.
Privacy and Google Street View
Google recently launched their Street View service in the UK, which is integrated with Google Maps, and allows you to view seamless 360 degree photo panoramas of a number of locations throughout the country. It’s just like a virtual tour of those locations.
The images were captured using a camera mounted on top of a car fitted with a GPS recording system. The images are stored with their GPS location, so finding the images surrounding a covered area is straightforward. Most of London is covered.
