Google Maps Street View, Bound For Trouble

May 30, 2007

I am an avid Google supporter, but I feel with the launch of the new Google Maps Street View feature they have put behind them the “Do no evil” motto they employ. Basically for select cities Google lets you zoom down to street level to view very high resolution photos, I would say they are surveillance quality photos… not the cheap stuff. Not only does this raise concerns for the obvious like license plate numbers, peoples faces, identity’s, etc. But on a more serious level, what if there was a photo of a police stake out, mob crime, or something else. There are laws preventing someone from walking in public taking pictures and publishing them without consent. I am not really sure how Google feels this was OK to release. Take a look at this photo I found of someone on the streets of California, the quality is amazing… I even scaled it down some to save on bandwidth. Personally I feel Google really messed up here, this seems like a rush to market feature that was not fully thought through.