New Street View map causing a buzz over privacy

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 10, 2007 | by Jay Evensen Deseret Morning News

Supposedly, a man can be seen picking his nose on a street corner in San Francisco. I haven't been able to find him yet.

Oh, and there are two co-eds sunbathing outside Stanford University. They're too easy to find. People have copied their images and put them all over the Internet.

Google's Street View mapping technology hit the computer world like a tornado this week, whipping up all sorts of debris about privacy concerns and what it really means to be out in public. The answers aren't clear. Only one thing is -- this is just the start of a future that brings more of what we do into focus for a worldwide audience.

Street View is a map that allows users to actually zoom down to street level, viewing 360-degree panoramic photos and they stroll through town one mouse click at a time. Like so many technologies, it began as something useful for military purposes before people saw a more general purpose.

At present, Google offers Street View maps only of selected parts of San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, New York City and Miami. These aren't real-time videos, they are still photos taken recently. Google plans to update them from time to time and, one assumes, to expand the offerings. A picture of your house could be coming soon.

Of course, Google Earth already has a picture of your house available for the world to see. But that one was taken from a satellite and probably shows only your roof. You would have to have been hammering shingles or covering your swamp cooler at just the right time to get your mug in those photos.

But Street View is something entirely different.

Time was, your mother would warn you to wear clean underwear when you left your house, just in case you ended up in the hospital and doctors might make judgments about the sort of home you came from. These days, even a casual stroll to the corner drug store could bring you instant world-wide fame, or shame, perhaps, if you do something stupid. And your home? Well, take a look, world.

No sooner had Street View been unveiled than a woman in Oakland, Calif., began complaining. According to the New York Times, Mary Kalin-Casey found that she could use any computer to zoom in on her apartment building and see her cat, Monty, perched in her second- floor window. "The next step," she wondered, "might be seeing books on my shelf." Her husband equated this to "peeping."

Of course, there is nothing on Street View that you couldn't see for yourself if you really were strolling down those streets. Even in its early stages, these maps can be useful for people trying to locate an address by sight, or who would like to check out a neighborhood or a potential hotel before making commitments. They can make for fun virtual visits to places you haven't been before.

But then, of course, if you really were just strolling down the street, you probably would have the decency not to stop and stare at sunbathers, zooming in on them from all sorts of angles. People who have a lot more time on their hands than the rest of us have combed through Street View and posted the more interesting photos for quick viewing. These include a man walking into an adult bookstore, another man standing in front of a strip-club entrance with a photo clarity that would make him easy to identify, and a man climbing an iron barrier to get onto a balcony (for a break-in?) and people protesting in front of an abortion clinic.

Of course, most of us are on film several times a day as we pass surveillance cameras in stores and traffic monitors mounted on street poles. Those images aren't readily available to the public, but they exist.

And then there are the surreptitious films that end up on Web sites, illuminating the flubs of celebrities, politicians and regular folks.

George Orwell got a lot of things right about the future in his novel "1984." The thing he missed, however, is that wholesale intrusions today come from "little brother," not his fictional government-imposed "big brother." They are the results of freedom, not oppression.

And there really isn't a thing anyone can do to stop the tide.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to find that guy picking his nose.

Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret Morning News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com