Leader
Monday August 13, 2007
The Guardian

Google's decision to dispatch vans across major US cities to take street-level photographs for its mapping service has opened up fresh controversy about the limits of privacy in the digital age. There are obvious attractions. By clicking "street view" from Google Maps you can move along Sunset Boulevard or a New York street. You can observe both sides of the road and adjust your view through 360 degrees to take in all the buildings around you. This is fine for flat hunters scouting out areas they might want to move to or for diners seeking restaurants, not to mention the new uses that Google's geeky army of followers will make available for no charge.

There is nothing illegal being done, but at any moment there are enough people on the streets doing something they don't want others to see, possibly on the other side of a window, to generate complaints. Google will erase embarrassing details if asked, but by then offending images might be embedded elsewhere on the web. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lobby group dedicated to protecting civil liberties in the digital age, points out that "everyone expects a certain level of anonymity as they move around their daily lives".

That is true, but the more interesting fact is that, while Google is once again sailing close to the wind, the sound of criticism is muted. A perverse law to emerge from the digital age is that the more personal data there is in the public domain, the less users fret about it. A generation that voluntarily entrusts vast amounts of personal information every day to websites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook - or, like the footballer Frank Lampard, via a mobile phone - and which is unfazed by the proliferation of CCTV cameras will not be taking to the streets in protest over Google's latest venture. This is because the benefits seem to outweigh the disadvantages, but also because the digital revolution is breaking down cultural, personal and national barriers in a way that was never expected.

How far can this can go before there is a backlash? It has already been suggested that people, far from objecting, might be recruited to monitor security cameras around the country from their own homes to increase their effectiveness. Before long, not just mobile phones but a large number of goods and possibly clothes as well will have chips embedded in them showing where they are. We will be able to find where we left our spectacles from the location devices on our mobile phones. Privacy groups are right to be concerned about potential abuses, but at the moment hardly anyone seems worried. Instead of Big Brother being thrust upon us, we have voted him in.


Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Too down to earth