Residents of the British village of Broughton reacted with a mob mentality to a visit by one of Google’s Street View camera cars, raising their pitchforks to cast out the unwelcome visitors. Will these villagers be able to defend their right to privacy in public or end up immortalized on Street View?

The villagers were on alert after a rash of burglaries in the affluent area. When resident Paul Jacobs saw the car pull into town donning a 360-degree camera, he was filled with moral outrage.

Jacobs reported that his, “…immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime.”

After harassing the driver about his invasion of privacy, Jacobs roused other Broughton residents to join him. The villagers formed a human chain blocking the street to deter the unwanted guest from finishing a sweep of the neighborhood.

Jacobs’ argument was that the cameras were invading his privacy and providing information that could be used by burglars. How he could blame the past burglaries on a service that hadn’t even recorded footage of the area yet is quite baffling.

The argument that the driver was invading the villagers privacy from the public road is completely ludicrous. Any footage recorded by the vehicles camera could have just as easily been snapped by a tourist driving through the picturesque village.

By forming a mob and making the papers, Jacobs actually put Broughton on the map for all the world to see. It’s also possible that he put his friends and neighbors on display as well.

The Street View car was most likely recording the entire incident from Jacob’s fist-shaking scolding to the villagers’ human blockade. Google could very well publish the footage in Street View for everyone to see Broughton’s own brand of mob justice.

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Entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 am under Google.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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