Google Street View

As Americans, we are very concerned with and feel entitled to our privacy. We don't like the idea of people being able to look up our information or see pictures of us without us knowing. This is why Google Street View has become so controversial. People find the idea of people seeing pictures of them on this site to be very creepy or at least uncomfortable. I can understand that. But...

I think that this whole situation is over-hyped. After all, we don't complain when people watch us on security cameras in every store we go to, do we? "But only security personnel see those," you might say. That's not always true. Some companies do market research by filming customers in stores. "Okay, but still, that's only a limited number of people, not the whole Internet." Sure, until they make a documentary about consumer behavior (like one I saw recently) and put that footage on television.

Plus, we put pictures of ourselves and our friends on the Internet every day! Like we were talking about in class last week, we even link our real names with these pictures.

Not only are we putting this information on the 'net, but we're getting surprisingly comfortable doing so. A few days ago my friend was complaining (on her blog) that a guy she had a crush on had a very common and thus un-Google-able name and had no Facebook account so she couldn't check him out. My reaction was "hmm, isn't it interesting that our first response to a crush these days is to try to spy on the person? Go go internet generation!" Yup, it's a common and accepted practice affectionately referred to as "webstalking" and it's probably happened to you!

So back to Google, who, to be fair, has pretty much single-handedly made this behavior possible. But can we really blame the company? They simply provide the technology and we are the ones who decide how to use it.

That's not to say that they should take no responsibility in the matter. They should not be negligent in privacy considerations, and I don't think they have been. Google's response to privacy concerns has been to allow people to report inappropriate images on the site. Google then edits the image to blur out any features that infringe on privacy, such as faces or license plates. I think that the only way they could do better than that (without taking down the whole Street View feature) is by going through all the images and blurring things out themselves, and Google has recently announced that they are planning to do this for the feature's release in the UK and possibly in the US as well.

So, while I am all for privacy in our personal lives and exchanges, I don't think Google has crossed a line here. Taking pictures of public places where anyone can see you is no worse than some of the infringements of privacy that our government performs in the name of security. Besides, these kinds of issues are a result of the technology that is now available to us, and we need to learn to deal with them as a society instead of pointing fingers. Like I said in class, the Internet is here to stay and we can't go backwards. We have to work together to figure out how to be comfortable with it while still utilizing it to its best potential.