When I look up my personal address on Google Street View, I can see my house and open garage clearly. My father is an electronics expert, and often takes machines apart to see how they work. If someone were to zoom in, they would clearly see all of the expensive computers, printers, and other technologies that my father has in the garage along with boxes of family memorabilia.
Although my family and I are not in the picture, I am still upset over Google’s actions. Google has taken an image of my property and put it out for anyone to see. Unfortunately, it is legal to take a picture of someone in a public space, even if that person is on private property. Google’s actions may be legal, but a moral issue is raised. Nobody has the right to take an image of someone else without his or her permission. If desired, a person should be able to remove his or her likeness – which is their property – from the eye of the public and media.
What Google has done is the near equivalent of posting the contents of someone’s diary online without his or her permission: people’s personal lives are being recorded and shown without any regard to the actual person. Google claims to be protecting people’s privacy by blurring out faces and licence plates. This will not do anything. Anyone can still see whether the person has an expensive car or not, or determine if the people living at the house are elderly or young children.
I am very worried over Google’s new product. I live beside a park, and there is the threat that someone could break into my house, as it has happened to my neighbours in the past. Any criminal could easily use Street View to see how my house connects to the park and figure out the best way to break into it or my garage, without ever having to set foot on my street.
Street View is an undeniably useful tool, but at what cost? People’s privacy is at stake. Blurring out faces and licence plates will not change that people’s likenesses are online without their permission, and it will not change the feelings of injustice that people will experience.
