Windows Live and Privacy

An anonymous reader writes "Today as we were biking around our neighborhood in a small city we saw a strange vehicle slowly driving around. It appeared to be an SUV, bristling with cameras mounted on the roof, and pointing just about every possible direction. The first time we saw it, all we could see was that it had a sign on the side, something about Windows. The second time we saw it, we stared at it so hard that the driver stopped and we had a chance to ask him what it was all about. He said he was driving around, filming streets, and that there were people doing this all over the world, and getting data from the air too. It was going to be available on the Web. I asked him if this was Microsoft's answer to Google Earth, and he indicated that it was. There seems to be very little about this on the Web, and I found no mention of Microsoft's collection of this sort of detailed street level data. The Windows site appears to be http://preview.local.live.com/, although since I use a Mac it didn't work properly. I'm not sure I want my neighborhood viewable on the Web from ground level. And are they going to edit all the people out? I don't see how they could."

Comments

Re:You're in public == you have no privacy

[QuantumG]

So, what you're saying is that one failed attempt is all we need? No-one should ever try again? Tell me, where can I go, right now, and get this kind of service? Oh, and maybe the reason why this failed the first time around had something to do with the technology (and average bandwidth of internet connection) available at the time? Maybe it had something to do with their marketing, or their choice of target audience (americans are not exactly the most early adopters) or maybe Amazon just thought this would be a cheap project and didn't put enough resources into it. The list goes on.