When the residents of Broughton spotted a Google Street View camera car they mobilised and blocked its progress through their village.

While I may not agree with all that Google does, I think that protesting against Street View is a little absurd. While the photos are certainly very clear and you can zoom in, you can’t see anything you couldn’t from standing in the street outside the house in question.  It’s not a real time video feed.

One has to ask the question “Is there any evidence that burglaries have risen in locations covered by Street View?”

There’s some (anecdotal) evidence that Google Earth (or the satellite/aerial photography view on Google Maps) has led to an increase in crime. This method might show the putative burglar possible escape routes through back gardens and alleys etc.

Asking for your image to be removed can garner more publicity than just ignoring it, surely defeating the object of the exercise. Images of people entering sex shops or being under the influence were on many news websites and even on the TV. If you really don’t want your house on Street View then wait a few weeks for all the launch publicity to die down.

The people of Broughton have brought more (admittedly brief) publicity upon themselves by blocking the Street View camera car than they would have suffered from allowing the images on the web. If I think “what have they got to hide” then surely criminals do too.

There are some people talking sense about Google Street View and to be realistic here this will all die down in a few weeks especially when the next thing comes along.

© 2009, Chris. All rights reserved. If you republish this post can you please link back to the original post.