[365] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Moaning About Google Street View -- While Her
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Sun Jul 6 12:26:41 2008
Message-Id: <200807061612.m66GCGVr030079@chrome.vortex.com>
To: privacy-list@vortex.com
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:12:15 -0700
From: privacy@vortex.com
Reply-To: PRIVACY Forum Digest mailing list <privacy@vortex.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Errors-To: privacy-bounces+privacy-forum=mit.edu@vortex.com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Moaning About Google Street View -- While Her Majesty's Eyes Are Everywhere
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000401.html
Greetings. Well, if there's one thing I've come to expect from the
United Kingdom's "Privacy International" and its sometimes amusing
leader Simon Davies, it's a sense of disproportion straight out of a
bad LSD trip regarding some key privacy issues.
Not that Simon is always wrong. He's upset about Viacom's demand
for YouTube log data. I agree that this is a matter of great
concern ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000400.html ).
But often PI seems to be largely engaged in an anti-Google agenda,
and Simon's latest target seems to be the upcoming launch of Google
Street View in the UK. Even with Google planning to obscure faces
and license plates for local images there, Simon is setting
deadlines for Google to respond to his queries and threatening
complaints to the British Privacy Overlords -- well the "Information
Commissioner" in any case. Various other observers in England have
suggested that Street View would be entirely legal there, by the way.
I argue in favor of Google Street View -- I consider it a very useful
service with acceptable privacy parameters as currently deployed
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000380.html ).
But for PI to complain about Street View in Great Britain has all
the hallmarks of a bad joke. The UK is utterly saturated with over
four million highly-intrusive, real-time, live, and frequently
abused (sometimes in the most inane ways) surveillance (CCTV)
cameras under government control -- something like one camera for
every fourteen people there. And according to most polls, the
public over there overwhelmingly supports this Orwellian
infrastructure, buying into the bogus claims that falsely attempt to
portray the cameras as crime-busting super tools.
Privacy International is a vocal critic of the UK government camera
surveillance system -- and that's to their credit. But when they
waste their limited resources on harmless and reasonably implemented
services like Street View -- which obviously pales to utter
insignificance as an issue compared with government camera abuse --
they're letting their traditional bias against Google get the better
of them again, and this can diminish PI's standing generally when it
comes to other privacy-related matters as well.
With the UK government spying into every nook and cranny with their
powerful and invasive camera systems, it's nonsensical to complain
as Privacy International is doing about a useful service like Street
View, which at least gives ordinary citizens a bit of photographic
assistance while navigating their way amongst the cameras of Her
Majesty's surveillance state.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
_______________________________________________
privacy mailing list
http://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy
