Google tool will turn us into 'surveillance state' (From Watford Observer)
Get involved: send your pictures, video, news and views by texting WO to 80360, or email us
Google tool will turn us into 'surveillance state'
10:09am Friday 20th March 2009 in News By John Harrison
A local politician has expressed her “astonishment” at Google's controversial new Street View function, saying it will help turn the UK into a “surveillance state”.
This week, internet giants Google launched its new on-line function which allows internet surfers to zoom in on digital pictures of roads across the globe, including many streets in Watford.
The launch comes after Google has spent a year driving cars around towns and villages throughout the country taking pictures to upload to their maps function.
The new cyber-gadget has been developed as part of Google Maps, but has been criticised because it show high quality photos of peoples' homes.
Faces of people captured on the street and car registration number plates have been blurred.
However, Sal Brinton, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Watford, has already expressed her concern.
She said: “I was astonished when I saw the detail of the photographs held in Google's database.
“The detail is very clear.
“Between the Labour Government and functionality like this we are turning into a surveillance state.
“The example that was drawn to my attention was that of one of our candidates who 'googled' her home address to find a picture of her car sat outside her home.”
Ms Brinton added: "This is an appalling invasion into our privacy. I am sure when people see the picture of their own homes, and the detail that has been collected they will be shocked.”
What do you think of Google's Street View? Have you found your house? Let us know by filling out a form below.
Comments(18)
After the Goldrush
says...
10:16am Fri 20 Mar 09
If this was our Government or worse, a foriegn Governments web site, the whole country would be up in arms but as its a "fun" site, everyone turnds a blind eye. Big Brother has arrived at the back door.
Roy Stockdill
says...
10:31am Fri 20 Mar 09
I find this utterly beyond belief, yet beyond a protest at Scotland Yard by press photographers, nobody seems very bothered about it.
Yet the powers-that-be can photograph us at every opportunity. This country is truly already a neo-fascist totalitarian state.
crazyfrog
says...
11:20am Fri 20 Mar 09
jesus loves you
says...
11:22am Fri 20 Mar 09
So stop being such paraniod people and enjoy it!!
(is the world moving a lttle too fast for poor old Roy?)
Paradise Watford
says...
11:28am Fri 20 Mar 09
At the very worst if you're a law abiding citizen you might happen to be near a crime scene and seen on cctv and asked to help with enquiries. But thats about it surely!
Anyway, its not the surveilance thats the worry its the law behind it. In the US they introduced so many laws in the name of combating terrorism that law enforcement agencies are actually using to monitor loads of non terrorist affiliated people, even people who know people who know people. Now THATS a worry, not street map.
Street map is a one of photo, its not constant streaming and what you get to see is a moment in time. If you happened to be doing something naughty or something you don't want others to know about then you'd be very unlucky to have been caught on camera!
And the technology is imperfect at this time, its new, but once its better refined then like they said all faces and number plates etc. will be smudged. And its always been a case that you can ask for your house to be smudged out too for those who are really paranoid!
Everyone practically has used google earth and there is no real outcry about that, well this is just an extention the only different is that it shows you a picture at street level rather than top down. Its clever, innovative and only intrusive (if at all) by accident
Dunk-
says...
11:29am Fri 20 Mar 09
Google street maps cannot be used as a surveillance tool. The information you can gather from it is just a snapshot and is not timely.
Most peoples house have already been photographed by estate agents without your permission (the previous owner gave it).
The threat against your privacy is mainly from the information you already give out to the call centres located worldwide, where laws like our data protection one don't mean anything.
Roy, If a foreign or domestic intelligence service was collecting picures of service men, police men etc for future use (i.e. when peace deals go pear shaped) then I am not sure how you create a law to target them and not the public. Though it would more likley protect the police man from chavs smashing up his home once they discover the man on estate is a copper.
jesus loves you
says...
11:45am Fri 20 Mar 09
watfordrick
says...
1:19pm Fri 20 Mar 09
Paradise Watford
says...
1:34pm Fri 20 Mar 09
Sorry, but to me if you cross the line and break the law then you should not be able to hide behind your human rights and surveilance is more than appropriate and necessary.
As to Facebook, they can only take what you put on there so just be careful if you do use what you post, what pictures you show and what information you give out.
Just as you wouldn't give a stranger in the street your mobile phone number (I know, my request for a number has been rejected many a time by a fit lady) why give it out over the net!
mintygit
says...
2:03pm Fri 20 Mar 09
Mike Ribble
says...
4:05pm Fri 20 Mar 09
Well there's no such thing as bad publicity - is there?
Roy Stockdill
says...
4:21pm Fri 20 Mar 09
That is a cliche that is trotted out so often that it becomes tedious to listen to! The point is not what the authorities might make of current laws but to what perverted use some future government might put them. Once laws enter the statute book they are hardly ever repealed.
An example - the police are covertly building up a national database of DNA samples, a great many of them given by innocent people who have committed no crime, for example witnesses of road accidents or burglaries. But can you imagine to what purposes some future totalitarian government might put such a database? What would Adolf Hitler have given, for instance, for an enormous database that told him instantly who was Jewish and who wasn't?
Those who cannot see the inherent dangers in all this surveillance are extremely short-sighted. Have we forgotten that a barmy council at Poole, Dorset, spent two weeks spying on a couple purely because officials thought they were trying to fiddle the school admissions system?
Roy Stockdill
says...
8:11pm Fri 20 Mar 09
I know that Google Earth is already well out of date, since the satellite view of my house shows fir trees in the back garden that we had cut down a couple of years ago or more because they had become too tall and a couple were leaning dangerously. According to Google Earth, however, they are still there.
Roy Stockdill
says...
8:23pm Fri 20 Mar 09
I probably know more about using computers and the Internet than 9 out of 10 people here. I use a digital camera regularly and have a very advanced hi-fi and visual-audio system, so I am well versed in modern technology (though I despise mobile phones and only use one when absolutely necessary).
However, I do worry about the ever-creeping advance of surveillance cameras and the development of vast national databases. We are told it is for our protection but I don't buy that. It seems to me we are steadily moving towards a society in which the government, and other less visible bodies, wish to keep all of us under constant surveillance 24 hours a day. And why? For no better reason than that modern technology says they can!
Seriously, has no-one read George Orwell's 1984 in which Big Brother has a state-controlled camera in every household in the land? We are gradually moving towards that situation and, as the Information Commissioner has said, we are "sleepwalking" into a surveillance state because far too many people are apathetic or are too ignorant to understand the consequences.
Andrew1963
says...
12:31am Sun 22 Mar 09
Roy Stockdill
says...
10:57am Sun 22 Mar 09
There is now talk of the government having access to all our e-mails and telephone calls. If that is not Big Brother I don't know what is!
Paradise Watford
says...
9:25am Mon 23 Mar 09
Its not something to be frightened of, and lets face it if our government wanted to spy on us using satellites pictures they'd get an up to date image from one of the ones it has flying through space (not one thats three years old!) from a satellite that can take a picture of anywhere in the world, even at night or through clouds, of something as small as a cigarette packet AND be able to read the health warning on the side...
And Roy if you've reached the point where we have a government that wants to get into selective breeding and killing off anyone who does not fit with their ideas then you have a problem regardless of what technology is at hand...
SouwfLondonHornet says...
10:15am Fri 20 Mar 09
You have Gatso cameras for speeding, traffic cameras for the roads, everywhere is cctv recording out every move.
It is impossible to go on a journey anywhere in the UK and not be picked up by a camera!
Is this wrong? Does this infringe our civil liberties? Yes!
What have we done about it? Nothing, we have sat back and let this happen.
Why? Apathy!