Google Street View (launched on May 25, 2007 in the U.S.) continues to expand its reach, providing service in France and Italy on July 02, 2008 and in Australia and Japan on August 4th, 2008. Google has overcome privacy hurdles in the UK and photographing has begun there. While Canada’s Privacy Commissioner voiced concerns nearly a year ago, promises to blur faces and license plates have mollified Canadian authorities. In fact, major Canadian cities have already been photographed. This is not surprising considering that Google is using the services of Calgary-based Immersive Media Corp.
Street View offers searchable panoramic views at street level. Since April these have been integrated into the Google Earth application, allowing users to move from a bird’s eye view to a pedestrian’s view. Uses include helping people locate destinations, promoting tourism, and (of course) advertising opportunities.
But not everybody is thrilled. On July 30th, The Smoking Gun posted a “Preliminary Statement” filed by Google lawyers in support of a motion to dismiss an action in trespass started by Aaron and Christine Boring who live in the Pittsburgh area. While the violation of privacy may be a little more obvious in that case (the photographs were taken from a privately owned lane), nevertheless Google representatives have voiced an attitude towards privacy that should give us all pause. Google appears to take the position that because technology has rendered privacy a thing of the past, therefore it has an entitlement to post whatever its cameras capture. “Can” implies “ought.” What appears to be missing in press releases of both Google and IMC is any acknowledgment of responsibility for negative consequences arising from their technologies.
This has become sufficiently worrisome that the National Legal and Policy Center (a U.S.–based ethics watchdog) has used publicly available Google search tools to gather information about a Google executive and has posted the information in a pdf document. The NLPC wants to provide an incentive for Google to provide some answers. [Pages removed since this post was originally published.]
I have some questions of my own:
1. Ethics. The fact that a corporation can implement a technology never implies that it should. A decision involving the global implementation of invasive and universally accessible “eyes” seems to demand an independent ethics review before the project ever moves from concept to development (never mind implementation). New medical procedures must be submitted to ethics review committees. Why not new business procedures? And when the business operates globally? Is there nothing administered by the WTO/WIPO to regulate the ethics of international commerce? Or am I being hopelessly naive?
2. Privacy. Is privacy a right? If so, then presumably it isn’t an absolute right. Like all other rights, it can be abrogated when there are competing values of greater weight. For example, privacy might be abrogated when public safety is at stake. There is an argument (not necessarily a good argument, but at least a plausible argument) for increased surveillance in many urban centres to ensure safety from acts of violence. Knowing you are watched can be a deterrent to violent behaviour. But can the right to privacy be abrogated for the sake of commercial expediency? We can expect to hear Google striking at the very roots of a rights-based notion of privacy, and dispensing altogether with the need to do a balancing act.
As an aside: the potential for a Google-driven Big Brother society is NOT Orwellian. George Orwell’s 1984 envisioned a world ordered by authoritarian government. Google offers something subtler. It is a great irony that the absolute right to abrogate our privacy has been privatized.
3. Religion. Does the belief in an omniscient being have something to do with our relative passivity in the face of Google’s incursions into our life? How often do you hear the pseudo-ethical argument that if we aren’t doing anything wrong, then we have nothing to fear (as if Google were a god)? The only people who object to a non–consensual public display of their images are johns soliciting hookers and burglars caught on camera, right? But fear of being caught as our primary motivation as social beings? Doesn’t that make a mockery of religious values and infantilize our attitudes towards both ethical and social authorities?
But their argument misses the point in any event. Privacy is a right. The onus rests on Google and IMC to justify its abrogation by reference to values of greater weight. But so far they haven’t attempted even a flimsy justification. So I protest. But I haven’t the same measure of resources as Google. So I have to use whatever’s at my disposal—as you can see above when the Street View car was in my neighbourhood.
Violating my privacy for the sake of the almighty er bottom line? No thank you.