Google Sued Over Street View

While preparing for class tomorrow night, it reminded me of this article I read earlier in the week about a couple who is suing Google for violating their privacy rights. However, this seems to go beyond the usual satellite imagery that is present in most of the pictures you would find on Google Earth.

The suit targets the company over images on its website, which allows users to find street-level photos by clicking on a map. To gather the photos, Google uses vehicles with mounted digital cameras to take pictures up and down the streets of major metropolitan areas. The Borings say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labeled “Private Road,” and that violated their privacy.

“There’s no merit to this action,” Google spokesman Larry Yu said… He said Google has links on the website that let property owners request that such images be removed if they cite a good reason and can confirm they own the property depicted. Yu also said that if the Borings made such a request to Google, he is confident that the image would be removed.

At first, I thought this was a cash grab against the company, but they are really only asking for $25,000 in damages. So, here’s the question: how close is too close before it becomes uncomfortable that people are going to see your trampoline and your 3-car garage on the internet? Is Big Brother watching you? I suppose the only thing that would have made the story better was somebody in the picture sitting in a hot tub out back with a beer in their hand or something like that. Oh, wait… maybe it already happened.

SlideShare

During my last course, I learned about this web site called SlideShare where you can post PowerPoint presentations that can be embedded in blogs and accessed online without needing to use PowerPoint. If you go to this link, you can see them there. I’ve also updated the postscript posts and embedded the presentations in there.