Google Street-Level Photos and Privacy

It's generating lots of talk:

• New York Times: Google Zooms In Too Close for Some.
• NYT The Lede blog: Scenes Through the Eyes of Google.
• Lauren Weinstein: Thoughts on Google Maps Street Level Photos and Privacy.
• Michael Zimmer: Google's "Street View" and Privacy in Public.
• A collection of interesting sightings at Wired: Request for urban street sightings,
• and at BoingBoing: Google maps is spying on my cat.

As someone who has done image processing research I'm a bit surprised that they didn't run the images through some code to automatically detect and blur license plates, faces and maybe other things.  That's a challenging problem but not outside the realm of possibility (call me, Google). :)

On Google and privacy generally, see also Ann Bartow: The Google Threat.

One more: Farhad Manjoo has a pretty good recap at his all-new Machinist blog at Salon: Google is watching you (but so is everyone else).

Comments

[GeoTrotter]

I added the best "Google Street View" here : http://www.geo-trotter.com/cat-street-view.php (28 views and more after).