Windows Now

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to feel that Google is finally stepping over some line here. So, OK, they're just collecting pictures that anyone could go outside and take themselves, and then stitching them together. I don't suppose there's anything legally wrong with that.

But the efficiency and level to which Google have done it is the real problem. The way I can zoom in people's windows to see their cats, the way I can see a woman walking down the street, get so much facial detail and even see the brand of water bottle she's carrying... well, after the novelty of this (admittedly cool) technology wears off, I'm hoping I'm not the only one that finds it more than just a little creepy.

I don't find it that big of a deal.  These are public places where anyone could have seen said people walking out of strip clubs, into adult books stories, etc.  It's perfectly legal for me or anyone else to take video or pictures from these public places, including Google.  In fact you often have to educate police officers on this matter, such as Thomas Hawk has done many times.

What strikes me as funny is people's imagined importance.  Who really cares if you're caught on camera walking into or out of a place?  If you are that concerned then you shouldn't have been there in the first place.  The whole concept of "privacy in public" is an illusion.  I can hire a private detective to tail you and legally get much better pictures of you throughout your day.  I can be out with my friends at a bachlour party and while taking pictures of the groom in front of the Lucky Lady accidently get you in the shot as you're walking out.  Then I post all my pictures on flickr and *bam* there you are, in public, on flickr, visiting a house of ill-repute.

Life is stranger than the imagined "Big Brother".  I've been in airports on a different contient and bumped into people I haven't seen for a decade.  I was just in D.C. and while sitting at a cafe in the Smithsonian bumped into my wife's high school English teacher, and both of us are from Colorado.  It also happened to be the one teacher my in-laws knew well and so everyone chatted it up.  It's not random pictures on the Internet that you have to worry about, it's life and the weird curve balls it throws you.

Lastly, please close your blinds anyway, if you're doing something you don't want captured on video or film then it's probably something we don't want to see with our bare eyes either.  And put some pants on.

Shawn,

Would you feel comfortable if I just camped out on the street and took pictures through your windows all day? Maybe I'm not breaking the law by doing so, but I am probably doing something that you don't like. If you complain, is it ok for me to just say, "Shut your blinds then!" Now take that and multiply it...Google is doing something 300 million people probably don't like. Legal? Yes. Appropriate and responsible? No.

Shawn, how did you know I blog without pants on?

But my point really was that Microsoft respects people's privacy, because it spent a LOT of money to redact personally identifiable information from their street-level data. So I can trust that Microsoft's going to respect me when it comes to the way they store data. On the other hand, Google is content to store my search history, my browsing history, pictures of me walking around my house, my license plate... whatever.

Google doesn't respect its users, and it should be getting the same lesson in respect that Microsoft got a number of years ago. But they're not. I wonder what line they'll have to cross before it happens.

I'm obviously in a little bit of a carefree mood as I am going to offer my personal opinion on one

soooooooooooooo its just showing how trashy this country really is and if people think its embarrasing then dont do it