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Google Street a Slice of Dystopian Future?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a recent CNET article, Google Street View 'is just wrong'. The short piece which makes up part of a larger feature about 'technology that's just wrong' goes on to explain that Google Street View is like a scene from George Orwell's terrifying dystopian vision of 1984 and that it could ultimately change our behaviour because we'll never know when we're being watched. 'Google? Aren't they the friendly folk who help me find Web sites, cheat at pub quizzes, and look at porn? Yes, but since 2006 they're also photographing the streets of selected world cities and posting the results online for all to see. It was Jeremy Bentham who developed the idea of the Panopticon, a system of prison design whereby everybody could be seen from one central point, with the upshot being that prisoners learnt to modulate their behaviour — because they never knew if they were being watched. And that doesn't sound like much fun, does it?'"
Google takes a photo like once every 6months. You are NOT being watched. It is NOT a spy camera. You should NOT be doing anything bad visible from the street. If you are jerking off outside on main street as a giant van with cameras rolls by. Well i'm sorry, your well kept secret is out. Points are:
A: They do it from a perfectly public location that many people will pass daily.
B: It is not a surprise, they aren't using spy technology it is a giant google van.
C: No laws are broken, why gang up on google about it, bring it to the house and see what happens (i can't imagine taking pictures outdoors being made illegal).
Or, heck, you can just go to London and be on camera 24/7 outside of your flat.
I read the internet for the articles.
This CNET article misses the point entirely. Google is not, and never will be, the problem. The problem is going to be the following:
(1) The local city government monitoring your car at every intersection and every stretch of road, and mailing you a ticket every time you exceed the speed limit by 5 mph or fail to beat the red light by 0.01 seconds. Go drive around the Phoenix suburbs and you'll see your future. You can pick up half a dozen robo-tickets just driving to the local mall and back.
(2) Every local business and every neighbor on your street recording you every time you go out for a stroll or take your dog for a walk.
(3) Your own spouse/parents/children/significant other putting you under 24/7 surveillance without your knowledge "for your own good".
The "Death of Privacy" scenario is inevitable, thanks to Moore's Law. And it won't be Google or the federal government doing most of the watching - it will be your family members, or the people in your neighborhood, or the folks running the local business nearby, or the city councilperson you voted for, because every one of them will rationalize that no one is really being hurt, and because the technology will make it so easy to do that they won't be able to resist the temptation. You won't be able to stop this trend any more than the RIAA and MPAA can stop unauthorized digital distribution of music and movies.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
(i can't imagine taking pictures outdoors being made illegal)
It looks like the pendulum is swinging that way...
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
At this point the class (a mass lecture of 150) got quiet...
"Oh, and look in his window! See that lamp? The guy who lived upstairs from me used to own that, and he gave to the guy who lives there. I remember that - it's a nice lamp and it was a great day. We all sat around drinking beer. Oh - just like the guy down on the corner over there."
We zoom down the street to the corner.
"Yeah - I recognise him - lousy stupid drunk. Really bad attitude. Never liked him."
"So that was fun, wasn't it kids? Dropping in on their lives, looking into their homes? Nice. so, now let's open up a new tab and I'll type in http://www.opentopia.com/hiddencam.php and look here - links to CCTs we can look through. Excellent. Click on this one, and look - we get CONTROLS- we can move and zoom the camera. Looks like we're in some university, similar to this one, but it looks like a very different time zone. Hhhhm... Let's zoom in on those kids over there. Look - one of them is picking his nose. Pig..."
The class got REALLY QUIET...
"And now, let's type in a some search criteria, like "inurl: view/index.shtml?videos=one" and look - an entire list of open cameras. Let's look at this one. Cool. People working in a call centre in Argentina. WORK YOU LOSERS! WORK!!! WORK HARDER!!! MAKE ME RICH!!! Hahaha! funny isn't it?"
No one laughed. People were squirming as we went from one private scene to another.
"OK - so today we're going to watch portions of some hollywood entertainment fodder. It's called "The Truman Show"."
They watched it with new eyes. They were guilty. They had sinned. We had gone from "isn't this interesting" to the "global panopticon" with a visceral sense of what surveillance really is as we watched people work, scratch themselves, goof off, pick their noses, BE HUMAN BEINGS.
RESIST THE SURVEILLANCE STATE. TAKE YOUR SPACE BACK FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY.
It's not that Google Street is evil, it's not that a CCT in an airport is evil. It's not that a CCT in a parking lot is evil. But in aggregate, it is evil, and Google is not helping.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
One thing about ubiquitous surviellance, is that it has limits too. Even if they record everything, nobody is looking at it. At best, it is archived where it can be looked at later during an investigation. Really, more surviellance just forces the gubmint to purge their files more often to save disk space.
Maybe there's the outside chance that it could all be monitored realtime by some facial recognition software that automatically alerts the cops so they can harass 'suspicious' people, but that's really not likely for most cameras. It probably won't ever get to the point where nobody wears sunglasses or hats anymore because they are tired of being harassed by the cops whenever the cameras can't recognize them.
...
1) there's a "report" feature in Street View where you can ask to have images removed. Not a big deal.
Who decides if an image should be removed or not? Who gets to make the request? How can any individual expect to know that Google has a picture of them sunbathing that they'd rather not have made publicly to the entire world, that may show up on sites like www.streetviewfun.com for voyeurs to get a kick out of?
2) they're photos of public places.
And some of those photos show the interior of private houses, private buildings, etc. Again, go to sites like www.streetviewfun.com and you can find some examples. Would you want photos taken through the windows of your home show up on the internet for the whole world to see? What if those photos catch you in a compromising position inside your own house, and you're unaware that Google is making it available to the whole world?
3) there are already countless intersections with cameras set up that capture cars running red lights. there are likewise countless sections of the highway where cameras are set up to photograph speeders. So, don't think the police need Google and MS to help them set precedent for anything.
Huge difference. Those sorts of cameras are for a specific purpose and cover very limited areas. In the case of red light cameras, speed cameras, etc. the law requires you be notified of their existance, which is why there are signs warning you of those cameras before you get to those locations. The results of those sorts of cameras are also usually restricted for the use of the police, so the general public can't just bring up a website to view what they've taken.
There are some things worth getting concerned over. This is not one of them.
Remind yourself of that thought as camera technology improves and you eventually start getting tickets for jaywalking, spitting on the sidewalk, littering, etc. in the mail a few weeks after some random camera on top of a police car snaps your picture doing that.
Why this always comes up again and again, that it is the same if Google or your neighbours are watching?
If you sunbathe in your neighbourhood there is the chance that 20 people see it, once Google goes around there is the chance that 2000000000 people see it. So the risk of embarrassment increases dramatically, people will stop sunbathing. That is a real effect.
What is so difficult about getting this?
I'm not sure if the Panopticon would be a prison. Take reality TV for example. People revert their behavior after a day or two even when they see the camera guy standing next to them.
Likewise most people say they believe in God, but will still watch animal porn on the internet while He can see them.
Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
by David Brin, Ph.D.
This is a tale of two cities. Cities of the near future, say ten or twenty years from now.
Barring something unforeseen, you are apt to live in one of these two places. Your only choice may be which.
At first sight, this pair of municipalities look pretty much alike. Both contain dazzling technological marvels, especially in the realm of electronic media. Both suffer familiar urban quandaries of frustration and decay. If some progress is being made at solving human problems, it is happening gradually. Perhaps some kids seem better educated. The air may be marginally cleaner. People still worry about over-population, the environment, and the next international crisis.
None of these features are of interest to us right now, for we have noticed something about both of these 21st century cities that is radically different. A trait that marks them distinct from any metropolis of the late nineteen-nineties.
Street crime has nearly vanished from both towns. But that is only a symptom, a result.
The real change peers down from every lamp post, every roof-top and street sign.
Tiny cameras, panning left and right, surveying traffic and pedestrians, observing everything in open view.
Have we entered an Orwellian nightmare? Have the burghers of both towns banished muggings at the cost of creating a Stalinist dystopia?
Consider City Number One. In this place, all the myriad cameras report their urban scenes straight to Police Central, where security officers use sophisticated image-processors to scan for infractions against the public order -- or perhaps against an established way of thought. Citizens walk the streets aware that any word or deed may be noted by agents of some mysterious bureau.
Now let's skip across space and time.
At first sight, things seem quite similar in City Number Two. Again, there are ubiquitous cameras, perched on every vantage point. Only here we soon find a crucial difference. These devices do not report to the secret police. Rather, each and every citizen of this metropolis can lift his or her wristwatch/TV and call up images from any camera in town.
Here a late-evening stroller checks to make sure no one lurks beyond the corner she is about to turn.
Over there a tardy young man dials to see if his dinner date still waits for him by a city fountain.
A block away, an anxious parent scans the area and finds which way her child wandered off.
Over by the mall, a teenage shoplifter is taken into custody gingerly, with minute attention to ritual and rights, because the arresting officer knows the entire process is being scrutinized by untold numbers who watch intently, lest her neutral professionalism lapse.
In City Two, such micro cameras are banned from some indoor places... but not Police Headquarters! There, any citizen may tune in on bookings, arraignments, and especially the camera control room itself, making sure that the agents on duty look out for violent crime, and only crime.
Despite their initial similarity, these are very different cities, disparate ways of life, representing completely opposite relationships between citizens and their civic guardians. The reader may find both situations somewhat chilling. Both futures may seem undesirable. But can there be any doubt which city we'd rather live in, if these two make up our only choice?
"People also have the right to be able to walk down any dark alley in the world and not get mugged. However, we can't reasonably expect this."
I don't see why we can't expect that. Just because society at large has come to accept dark alley muggings as a part of life doesn't mean it's right or should be tolerated the way it is. Perhaps if it were cracked down on more, or dark alleys were, well, not quite such dark alleys (a little light goes a long way), then perhaps we can all reasonably expect to be safe regardless of the type of public street we walk down.
Now if you'd say we can't reasonably expect to be perfectly safe walking through an abandoned building, that'd be another matter.
"If you want a reasonable expectation of privacy, shut your blinds."
Although I agree that you shouldn't expect complete and total privacy when the blinds are closed, there's a big difference between knowing that anybody -could- be looking in at any time, and the an extreme of, say, somebody pointing cameras through your windows and streaming the video feeds, live, to hardburnshouse.com .
I like my curtains open - it lets natural light in. I don't mind that people who walk past glance in. I don't even mind it when there's a big game on and people waiting for the bus decide to watch along with the game (and if I did mind, I'd close the curtains). That doesn't mean I'd want somebody to be peering inside 24/7 watching my every move. Nor do I think that I should feel that that is -exactly- what somebody might be doing, and that I should thus always keep my curtains closed.
If everybody does start thinking exactly that way, then that 'dystopian' future will indeed become reality.