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?'"

Comments

Re:A Pointless Rant

[blhack]

(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. This is a safety problem.
I live in Old Town Scottsdale (a phoenix suburb with lots of shops and bars and stuff that you can actually *WALK* to) so i do a lot of walking around intersections and stuff. All of the intersections have those red light cameras on them, and there is almost ALWAYS a photo radar van parked somewhere around old town.
When people see these things, they stop paying attention to anything that is going on around them EXCEPT for the van/camera/light.
What is more dangerous?
Somebody running a red light by a half a second or so, or somebody stomping down on their Huge lifted escalade (uhg..) to try and speed up and make it through the yellow light without getting a ticket.

Tempe (another suburb, home to ASU) is even WORSE. They recently installed stationary cameras on Rural(scottsdale rd) just north of University. Anybody from this area knows that this is one of the busiest areas in tempe (traffic wise). It is the main route into and out of ASU.
Well, when you're in thick traffic, driving 50mph, and suddenly the person who is just in town visiting sees the camera and slams on the brakes all the way down to 20mph without any warning (except brakelights) it causes accidents.
Lots of them.

When did we get to vote on this matter?
And who the hell voted FOR it?