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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?'"
I love it when arts majors try to emulate Orwell and struggle hard to dream up "dystopian" scenarios in anything and everything to appear sophisticated in the eyes of their colleagues..
God only knows we are living in dystopian times, with our society under attack from left, right, and corporate interests which don't fit into any pat category..
But Google street view is hardly a "live view" where neighbors snoop upon each other. It's just a one-time snapshot of a spot. If you happen to be bonking someone on the street just at that moment, and don't want your face (or whatever) on camera, tough. Do it indoors..
One picture in 6 mos to a year video surveillance does not make. Now those ATM and security cameras that have been around for 20 plus years EVERYWHERE are not scary, but GOOGLE's once a year picture - now thats BIG BROTHER for you... Dodos..
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fPgV6-gnQaE
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).
A van drives down the streets once and takes pictures. Maybe in a few years they'll do that again. Now if you happened to be in one of them maybe you'd have some feelings about that, but one snapshot of you every few years hardly amounts to a surveillance society.
Why aren't people more optimistic? This is a sort of poor telepresence: you can get a small part of the experience of traveling to some cities without actually going there.
I own two cats, you insensitive clod!
The difference between 1984 and Google is that google allows anybody to view the street.
Sorry, google just doesn't feel like "big brother." Nor does it seem to be going in that direction.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
What value is a face with no name, or a street on which you know not a single person? Data only has value when used in conjunction with known facts, and the only people in the end who are going to be burned by such knowledge are the ones who reject it instead of learning how to use it for their own and other peoples' benefits.
Furthermore, at least google has its images of public space open for people to view at all times. If you wanted to look through a government owned public camera do you know where to go, who to ask? Can you even get permission to observe those feeds? There is always a bigger bogeyman lurking around each corner, so at least meet him on your own terms instead of waiting for him to come at you when you least expect it.
I've flipped through the article and the little pictures. It would seem that the authors are trying to put an "It Came From The Deep" feeling against technology [and materials] that they don't currently see a market for or appreciate the market force behind. It's not unusual for people to fear things that they don't understand.
It is, however, unusual for a Tech publication to attempt to use fearmongering as a tool to bring attention to technology that their writers don't fully understand.
I can only hope that this piece was not meant to reflect that attitude of all of the writers over at cnet - it's certainly not flattering.
- Avron
Since the whole damn thing is contained in the summary.
It would be nice if the authors had explained why they thought they had a right to privacy when in public, or whether they believed that Google was taking pictures inside people's houses. But I guess a fear mongering rant was what they were in the mood for instead.
"Choosing to refrain from producing another person demonstrates a profound love for all life" [vhemt.org]
For decades, corporations and government have had the technology to watch us. Google has allowed normal people to see that kind of data. We can now not only see personal details about each other, but also spy on our bosses and "leaders". Google (and search/database technology in general) has an amazing democratic potential.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
I looked up my home address and the Google Street View was off by about 10 house numbers. With that kind of inaccuracy, I'm not worried about it.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
had a job where you need to drive somewhere you have no clue what the landmarks are etc. As a field tech, street view is a nice bonus. When I can use it I use it. If it reduces my blood pressure a couple points then maybe I get to live an extra year. And besides it is hardly real-time. I don't see protests of businesses that put webcams in their store fronts.
My apartment is visible on Google Street View, which I found a bit unsettling because the street it's off isn't really a street. But Google drove down it and took pictures. It was on Google Maps, after all. Thankfully my blinds were down that day so you can't see inside, but you can see the outside.
On the other hand, that's one instant of time a good year or so ago. It's not constantly updating. It's not like there are cameras inside my apartment constantly watching me. It's not exactly dystopian, just somewhat unsettling.
Now if it were constantly updating, allowing people to follow my car around, then I would be worried. Otherwise I don't really care.
On the other hand, for the most part, Google Street View is mostly useless. It doesn't really offer any information that you can't get from the satellite view. I frequently go over unknown routes using Google Maps (or Google Earth - same diff) but I have never really found street view to be that useful. There are probably some exceptions, though.
(The second one is actually worse than it appears on street view, since it used to be a rotary, and they haven't made a complete circuit. Go ahead, try and guess which lane is which from the satellite image.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Google is giving access to StreetView (and pretty much every other service) to EVERYONE. This is NOT the same as some big-brother, 1984 scenario.
Don't you think you would change your mind, maybe just a little bit, if all the surveillance cameras in the UK had a website that allowed you to view everyone, just like the "watchers" ?
My problem is, and always has been, that certain people think they are "higher above" others. That's why you get the classic public "surveillance", where a select few watchers have access to all of the cameras, and no one else.
But what if everyone had access to it? I would be totally for that. It would even the playing field. Not that there's any game to play, but at least we have access to the same technology the big-brother "watchers" had, and that makes me feel like I'm not so much under a microscope, but part of a community.
Google Street Views is NOT the one to attack. Google is doing everything the right way - they're giving us ALL access to information. Isn't that what we want??
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
That's terrible! We haven't even figured out how to prevent these buildings that are out in the open and easily observable from public places from being seen by every day passers-by. And now we can see them on the internet too? What is the world coming to?
Oh, and open the borders, and photographers should have rights to take pictures of copyrighted works displayed in public.
Maybe it's me but I fail to see how a map so advanced that you can actually see the building you want to go to is bad. Also the whole purpose is not to monitor people, unlike the camera's that the city of Chicago is putting up at pretty much every intersection. It's not like the images from the van's are uploaded instantly and they have one on every block of the city. It really annoys me when people always look at every tech like it's going to be skynet or 1984, tech is basically to make our lives better, that some of it is used for our own survalence then thats just an unfortunte side effect.
You've got to be kidding me. Anyone who thinks that Google Street View is like 1984 is a moron.
There are two enormous differences between Google Street View and Big Brother:
1) Google takes pictures for street view every now and then. It's by no means real-time. If someone looks up my address and sees me out mowing my lawn, the only thing they know is that sometime in the past year, I mowed my lawn.
2) Google takes pictures only in public places. Guess what, everyone can see you there anyway, and in many cities you're probably already on an actually live video feed. You're not being watched any more than you already were!
Are there really no better conspiracy theories to post today? Come on.
IMHO we already live in a dystopian future. It's not exactly Orwellian in nature at this point and it seems that a more critical distinction would need to be made. I don't think that Orwell's control systems were simply about technology, it was much more about how the state used the technology. In San Francisco there are already cameras all over the place. Everything we do is already tracked. Your cell phone has a GPS built into it that can track you at all times. That tracking information may never disappear and could be used now or any time in the future. I'm not saying throw your cell phone out but be aware of what you already have committed to. That said I think it's important that we recognize how the technology is currently used, how it's been abused in the past, and how it could be abused in the future. In the case of 1984 Winston Smith did not have access to the technology, he was only subject to it. In our case we are subjects of the technology but we still have access to it. That alone is an important distinction, and belies a very different program (we're more interesting to marketers than spies). I think it's important to questions Google or any other entity that further erodes privacy in any manner. Who's using it? How is it being used? Can we choose to opt out? When and where can we choose to opt out? Is this patently invasive technology or not? For instance when the NSA hires/forces/steals Googles information on citizens domestically then the use issue becomes something important for the republic to question. I think it's important to get away from our impulsive reactionary response to "Orwellian Future" and start thinking critically about what we are really dealing with. Orwell would write a very different book if he were alive today, and we should start thinking in those terms.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
If your home address is off in Google Maps, you can now move it yourself. Try it, it works!
You can of course use the same feature to hide it, if you are so inclined.
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.
Since when do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are visible from a public street?
I'm going to take a wild guess here: Some folks have never lived in a small town.
While Bentham did theorize the panopticon as a penal architecture, it's important to note that it was also intended by Bentham to be an architecture for the workplace - a disturbing paralell. Regardless, it was Foucault's analysis (and not Bentham's own, which saw the panopticon as an unproblematic moral reformatory) of panoptic architecture that developed the most cogent discussion of how power works (in corrosive ways) within the panopticon. Foucault's discussion has routinely been applied to critiques of IT (perhaps the most well known being Shoshana Zuboff's "In The Age of the Smart Machine"). So while it's nice to note Bentham here, it's probably more true to the spirit of the piece to keep Foucault in mind.
Are you trying to say that there's a negative side to porn?
which is totally what she said
(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.
...
God only knows we are living in dystopian times
"Dystopian" is relative. Compared to my youth, yes. Compared to my Grandpa's youth and all times before, no.
Since mankind's past is dystopian, why shouldn't the future be?
But wait - we already live a utopian future, at least most of us in an industrial country. We have pleasures and gadgets and things kings of old couldn't even dream of! 100kph surface travel, flight, far fewer deadly diseases, refrigeration, television, telephones, you name it.
We don't burn people at the stake, most civiliced nations don't execute anyone, etc.
Yes, there is a struggle between those who want libetry and privacy, and those who want to amass personal wealth and power, but the second group hasn't yet won. Thet struggle has probably been going on since before we became homo sapiens.
Compared to generations before mine we live in utopia. To quote Max Yasgur at Woodstock, "we must be in heaven, man!"
As to Google maps, I agree with you and don't see how still pictures are going to invade your privacy unless one of these cameras catches you picking your nose or scratching your balls. A bigget threat to your privacy is the cameras that are everywhere now - red light cameras, ATM cameras, hell there's some Orwell style cameras on 5th street here in Springfield to keep people from pissing in the alleyways, sans the "big brother is watching" signs.
It's a little late to worry about Google street, here in Springfield anyway.
-mcgrew
PS- I was an art major, you insensitive clod!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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?