Forget your privacy, you’re in public, and now on Google

When you drive around in a van, taking 360° snapshots of an entire city, you’re bound to capture somebody doing something that they would have rather left off the Web. Such is what happened with the Google van and its 360° camera as it captured images of highly populated areas in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami; the results were published to the new Google service, Street View, for the world to see.

So hundreds of enthusiasts, just as they did with Google Earth, decide they’re going to search Google’s Street View for things out of the ordinary or just plain wrong; hopefully, it was in their spare time. There were a few camera glitches, a couple area’s that looked as if they were the end of the earth; but, there were also some images of people doing what they do best, being themselves.

There’s no taking back the image of a man walking out of a strip club in San Francisco, or the guy who was caught entering an ‘adult bookstore.’

In addition, the Google van-cam happened to capture 2 women sunbathing (as shown); unfortunately, nothing revealing was captured. Funny, had anyone seen those women in ‘real life,’ they would have thought nothing of it; the Internet seems to make little things like that so fascinating.

But in light of these.. what? 5 or 6 images, everyone wants to raise ‘privacy concerns’ with Google? Please! Driving around and capturing images of people in their day to day lives, last I checked, isn’t a crime;  that is to say, apart from the case of stalking.

Google defends itself by claiming the images are no different than what other people would see in their daily lives.

It could have been someone walking down the street with a video camera, a phone camera, or even a (statically located) security camera. The rule of thumb here is: don’t do anything, in public, that you wouldn’t want the whole world to see.

So there’s 5 people who are giving the entire world a couple minutes of enjoyment. Chances are, they’re proud to be on Google Street View; but if not, there’s certainly nothing they can do about it now. The images have already been set in motion as thousands of people are now capturing the images, saving them to their hard drives, and publishing them all over the web. 

The next step? Identify these people and send them massive amounts of e-mail. :)

• Google Street View doesn’t break privacy laws – End of story
• Boring couple loses Google Street View privacy lawsuit
• Google Street View is not privacy-infringing – receives green light in UK
• Google responds to Google Maps Street View privacy concerns in Europe
• Google faces Street View ban in the UK – Does it violate privacy law?