Google Maps Street View invades privacy, exposes alien life

What are those guys doing in front of the Google Plex. What is the yellow van on the T-shirts?

http://maps.google.com/?q=Mountain+View,+CA&ie=UTF8&ll=37.421452,-122.084&spn=0.001157,0.00294&t=k&z=19&om=1&layer=c&cbll=37.420894,-122.084098&cbp=1,360,0.502439236943973,0

Is it related to the Street View feature?

Is this really an invasion of privacy? How is this different than if somebody was taking a picture of the tree in front of her house? As long as Google is not using the image to make money off of her house than it might not be considered invasion of privacy. There is a good discussion on Scoble's blog about this here:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/30/boingboing-reader-demonstrates-misunderstanding-of-privacy/

Brian - They don't have to be making money off it for it to be an invasion of privacy. Those two items are unrelated.

The level of detail is pretty creepy.

Is it an invasion of privacy when I take a picture of my friend on the street and somebody's cat is in the window in the background?

Brian - Not of the cat's privacy, but it might be an invasion of the property owner's privacy.
It depends on the level of detail in the photo and what it is used for. Taking the picture and sharing it only with your friend is very different from posting on a public web site. Taking a picture of one person's cat is also very different from taking a picture of every cat in the city and identifying by address, where every cat lives.

This is a complex issue. Scoble's assertion that if I can see it from the street I can photograph it and do whatever I want with it is overly simplistic and not correct.

I like that ET thing. THat's only slightly more than five miles away from me. Most likely an artifact of something since that seems to be at the extreme limit of where they finished taking that series of pictures.

"That ET thing" appears on every place you go to using Street Views. It's always there. It's the only place where the 360º camera has a flaw... perhaps it should be called a 356º camera?

Antonio, the van is the truck that they use to take all the street level pictures with.

Amazing. They're peeking in windows now, and yet Google Maps still has a vacant lot for the building I live in in downtown Washington, D.C., which has been here for THREE YEARS.

I found the alien again further down that same road

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=new+york&ie=UTF8&om=1&layer=c&cbll=40.673835,-74.406761&cbp=1,234.924811093247,0.61024115755627,1&ll=40.69795,-74.405594&spn=0.099562,0.150032&z=13

I found the alien further down the same road CORRECT LINK.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=new+york&ie=UTF8&om=1&layer=c&cbll=40.671532,-74.405889&cbp=1,233.21452170418,0.650969989281887,2&ll=40.674991,-74.404821&spn=0.006754,0.020084&z=16

Looking around you can see that the San Francisco maps are WAY more detailed than the other cities. Zoom all the way in on a SF image and you can see everything. Do the same in NY and it's a blocky mess.
If the NY maps are more like the "standard" they will use it does make it less creepy.

I am sure people going to come up with interesting things over next few days.

http://www.wickedviews.com/ - Wicked StreetView sightings :-)

Google has got nothing on Yahoo's Stalk Photo Network.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/secret_squirrel/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/voyeurinn/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/babes-icu/

I think the law is way behind Web 2.0 and needs to catch up in a hurry. There's another interesting and funny article of Street View here:

http://paralleldivergence.com/2007/06/03/the-private-lives-of-google-street-view/

danlod google street viw

i am ziad from lebanon i hope to download the google street

i am ziad from lebanon i hope to download the google street

street

This is a quick video from AP discussing the privacy concerns: http://thenewsroom.com/details/361222