Google Street a Slice of Dystopian Future? 325
An anonymous reader writes "According to a recent CNET article, Google Street View 'is just wrong'. The short piece which makes up part of a larger feature about 'technology that's just wrong' goes on to explain that Google Street View is like a scene from George Orwell's terrifying dystopian vision of 1984 and that it could ultimately change our behaviour because we'll never know when we're being watched. 'Google? Aren't they the friendly folk who help me find Web sites, cheat at pub quizzes, and look at porn? Yes, but since 2006 they're also photographing the streets of selected world cities and posting the results online for all to see. It was Jeremy Bentham who developed the idea of the Panopticon, a system of prison design whereby everybody could be seen from one central point, with the upshot being that prisoners learnt to modulate their behaviour — because they never knew if they were being watched. And that doesn't sound like much fun, does it?'"
Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:4, Insightful)
God only knows we are living in dystopian times, with our society under attack from left, right, and corporate interests which don't fit into any pat category..
But Google street view is hardly a "live view" where neighbors snoop upon each other. It's just a one-time snapshot of a spot. If you happen to be bonking someone on the street just at that moment, and don't want your face (or whatever) on camera, tough. Do it indoors..
Yet another panic-y article from no-clue crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
-Em
But it's so static... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why aren't people more optimistic? This is a sort of poor telepresence: you can get a small part of the experience of traveling to some cities without actually going there.
Big difference (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, google just doesn't feel like "big brother." Nor does it seem to be going in that direction.
Fear and power dichotomy (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, at least google has its images of public space open for people to view at all times. If you wanted to look through a government owned public camera do you know where to go, who to ask? Can you even get permission to observe those feeds? There is always a bigger bogeyman lurking around each corner, so at least meet him on your own terms instead of waiting for him to come at you when you least expect it.
TFA is rather myopic (Score:5, Insightful)
It is, however, unusual for a Tech publication to attempt to use fearmongering as a tool to bring attention to technology that their writers don't fully understand.
I can only hope that this piece was not meant to reflect that attitude of all of the writers over at cnet - it's certainly not flattering.
- Avron
Not google's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet another panic-y article from no-clue crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
TOTALLY different than "big brother". (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you think you would change your mind, maybe just a little bit, if all the surveillance cameras in the UK had a website that allowed you to view everyone, just like the "watchers" ?
My problem is, and always has been, that certain people think they are "higher above" others. That's why you get the classic public "surveillance", where a select few watchers have access to all of the cameras, and no one else.
But what if everyone had access to it? I would be totally for that. It would even the playing field. Not that there's any game to play, but at least we have access to the same technology the big-brother "watchers" had, and that makes me feel like I'm not so much under a microscope, but part of a community.
Google Street Views is NOT the one to attack. Google is doing everything the right way - they're giving us ALL access to information. Isn't that what we want??
Re:Yet another panic-y article from no-clue crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't surveillance, it's people abusing information gained through surveillance. The solution is to make sure that there are checks on those people tasked with watching security footage to make sure they're not using any of that information in an inappropriate fashion. And the simplest, fastest, cheapest way to do that is to install a surveillance camera in the office of the people who watch surveillance footage.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
But if your windows are open, people are free to look in. I love the jump from Cat on window sill to 'knowing what I am reading'.
Logical fallacy for the WIN!
Don't worry it's not the end of the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
What a load. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two enormous differences between Google Street View and Big Brother:
1) Google takes pictures for street view every now and then. It's by no means real-time. If someone looks up my address and sees me out mowing my lawn, the only thing they know is that sometime in the past year, I mowed my lawn.
2) Google takes pictures only in public places. Guess what, everyone can see you there anyway, and in many cities you're probably already on an actually live video feed. You're not being watched any more than you already were!
Are there really no better conspiracy theories to post today? Come on.
Orwell and the modern state (Score:3, Insightful)
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to take a wild guess here: Some folks have never lived in a small town.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:5, Insightful)
2. If you sunbathe in public then see point 1 as well.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
How about closing your curtains when you want to be private and not closing them when you don't? What's so hard about that? Your privacy is completely under your control.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:5, Insightful)
I often wonder about what will become of all of this. Typically, when somebody starts dicsussing the "Big Brother sees all" dystopian future, somebody else retorts with the classic "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" rhetoric. Since it seems clear that, ultimately, we're going to end up in this position no matter what we do, I wonder which part will change... will we all end up in fear, or will we all end up with nothing to hide?
It seems to me that there are a lot of things that all of us do which, although we may not be afraid of an execution or a prison term if we get caught, we would at the very least be embarrassed about if exposed. A lot of our social mores and most "morality"-based laws tend to persist because the chances of getting caught are so slim. Perhaps society will, unexpectedly, end up changing for the better overall if everything is out in the open - if everybody gets caught doing everything, we might suddenly end up getting a lot more reasonable about what we care about catching each other doing.
Obviously, that's not going to work for you and me - we're too used to things the way they are. But since it looks like our grandchildren's generation isn't going to understand the very meaning of the word "privacy", I can only hope that the end result is a world where you don't really need any.
Dystopian future? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Dystopian" is relative. Compared to my youth, yes. Compared to my Grandpa's youth and all times before, no.
Since mankind's past is dystopian, why shouldn't the future be?
But wait - we already live a utopian future, at least most of us in an industrial country. We have pleasures and gadgets and things kings of old couldn't even dream of! 100kph surface travel, flight, far fewer deadly diseases, refrigeration, television, telephones, you name it.
We don't burn people at the stake, most civiliced nations don't execute anyone, etc.
Yes, there is a struggle between those who want libetry and privacy, and those who want to amass personal wealth and power, but the second group hasn't yet won. Thet struggle has probably been going on since before we became homo sapiens.
Compared to generations before mine we live in utopia. To quote Max Yasgur at Woodstock, "we must be in heaven, man!"
As to Google maps, I agree with you and don't see how still pictures are going to invade your privacy unless one of these cameras catches you picking your nose or scratching your balls. A bigget threat to your privacy is the cameras that are everywhere now - red light cameras, ATM cameras, hell there's some Orwell style cameras on 5th street here in Springfield to keep people from pissing in the alleyways, sans the "big brother is watching" signs.
It's a little late to worry about Google street, here in Springfield anyway.
-mcgrew
PS- I was an art major, you insensitive clod!
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
In the same manner you would if you don't see someone? If your enacting of 'privacy' is reactive, its your own fault. If I leave my fly down and someone sees my X-men underwear and then I zip up my fly, I don't see how that is more or less a violation of privacy than if I don't notice someone seeing them or if I walk past a security camera.
I don't even putting it on the intertubes makes a difference. If that security camera caught sight of a bank robber that appears on the frame at the same time as you, and the tape goes online and the world can see your fly is down, thats too bad. If you can be seen from public, especially if a depiction of you is secondary and you just happen to be recorded along with the primary information, its tough nuggies. You don't have a right to privacy while in public. The same applies to looking in an open window from public space (in this case, the street).
Re:What a load. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except under normal circumstances, everyone can't see you. When you are "public view", only the people in the near vicinity can see you, and that's the expectation that you have. In a lot of situations you would certainly behave differently if you had the expectation that EVERYONE, from your mother to the police could see you.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
What takes place is my home is my business, windows open or not. You should not be looking in unless you want other looking in your home as well. If we've reached that point then it's too late and google is the least of our worries.
Re:TFA is rather myopic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
People also have the right to be able to walk down any dark alley in the world and not get mugged. However, we can't reasonably expect this.
If you want a reasonable expectation of privacy, shut your blinds.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:1, Insightful)
I say Google should team up with the Cyber-Goggles [slashdot.org] inventors and make the street view searchable at the object level.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
Privacy isn't going away, it's just changing. The only people who are going to "lose" any privacy are those who are too inflexible to move with the change and use the technology to preserve their privacy. It's the people who think that just because they don't see any big honking TV cameras with lights, that what they're doing or saying won't end up on the evening news or YouTube. That might have been a good assumption once, but it's not good now. However, technology also gives you lots of ways to shoot your mouth off anonymously, if you wish. The name of the game is choosing the appropriate venue in light of the technology.
I don't really think this is a new or unique situation. When people started moving in from rural areas into the cities, they inevitably faced a loss of some assumed privacies. If you live in a house in the middle of the woods, you can walk around in your back yard in your birthday suit and be pretty confident that nobody's going to see you. You can't stand on your balcony in a highrise and be confident of the same thing. People adapted; their ideas of where it was safe to assume that they have privacy changed. And life moved on, perhaps even arguably for the better (if you're an urbanite, anyway). In return for living in the city, a whole lot of things that wouldn't have been possible to do without attracting a lot of attention or censure in a small town are now possible.
I see that as being a fairly good example of what's happening to the world in general as it becomes more connected and incorporates more information technology. Some old ideas of 'privacy' will become less than relevant, but to new generations who grow up in that environment, it will have entirely new definitions. They will never assume that you can get your mail in your underwear without the world watching, but they'll never know that it wasn't always considered intrusive to 'out' someone's real name online.
The only risk in all this is that, as the technology develops, we might allow untrustworthy people too much access to it -- in the form of wiretap or anti-encryption laws, for instance -- that will hamper the creation of new private spaces even as old ones are rendered obsolete and irrelevant by technology. That strikes me as a real danger and one that we have to be vigilant about. No amount of security is worth turning over the keys to what will increasingly be huge portions of our lives to authorities, however innocuous or beneficent they may seem today.
Re:Yet another panic-y article from no-clue crowd (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all. As I said before, most law-enforcement cameras can only be accessed by law enforcement officials. The general public can't just go to a well-known website and pull up any given red-light camera to see what's going on in that intersection. With Street View anybody on the entire planet from you and me to anybody in the CIA to the leaders of Korea, Iraq, etc. could simply go to google.com and potentially see you scratching your ass nude in your living room if the Google camera cars just so happen to be driving by your house at the right time. There's a huge difference between a small number of authorized people viewing images from red-light cameras and the whole world seeing inside your house because Google's cameras are able to capture that image as they do a drive-by.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:4, Insightful)
It is about calculating risks. The _possibility_ of constant surveillance changes the situation.
And
And
I don't say it is all that bad and the end of the world, but it strikes me how such development is just accepted with binary logic: So you don't like people see you doing something, don't do it. But that is exactly the panoptic effect.
Re:Bizarre and hysterical rant (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you make it sound like there's anything you or I or anybody else can do about it. I don't think there is, not any more. I'm not saying I'm OK with it, I just wonder what the privacyless future is going to look like - if it's going to be as bad as most people think or maybe a little less bad.