08 Oct Google Street View fear and loathing

Robert Creighton writes:

As happens in most places when Street View goes live, I predict the local media will run around the streets trying to find locals who are outraged at the “invasion of privacy” introduced by this technology. I will be watching Tom Murphy on CBC News as they try to stir up yet another “controversy.”

Worth noting that the cameras used in UK seem to be much higher resolution than used here.

No idea what Tom will do, but in recent weeks, CBC has been conspicuously indulging the hoary tradition whereby old media condemn the moral decay promoted by attractive new-media competitors. See Nora Young’s Spark interview with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (here and here) deploring Google’s search feature, Ideas’ recent hand-wringing about teen sexual depravity caused by social marketing websites (a variant of which can be seen on CBC Newsworld), and the Globe and Mail‘s shocking discovery that people in the entertainment industry sometimes have sex with each other, even when they are not precisely equal in age or employment status.

I’m less sanguine about the British comparison. Police authorities in Britain really do conduct a staggering amount of real-time surveillance of private citizens, not a great thing imnsho.