Google is busy photographing all corners of Ireland and putting the pictures on the net. . . and has captured people in dodgy situations, writes KILIAN DOYLE
HAVE YOU been snapped by the Googlemen yet?
As of this week, they’ve been out there, skulking around Irish cities taking snaps of all they survey, trying to be as inconspicuous as it is possible to be while driving a black Opel Astra with a huge camera perched atop scaffolding on its roof.
Soon, Google hopes, they’ll have every nook and cranny of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford recorded and available to view for free on the interweb via the Street View feature on Google Maps and Google Earth. Ain’t technology grand?
But not everyone is happy. Take, for example, those fine fellows in Republican Sinn Féin who last year issued a typically bizarre press release decrying Google’s information-gathering exercise as a “dangerous invasion of privacy”. Perhaps it is. But only if you’ve something to hide, eh lads?
“Malicious viewers could use such data to establish weaknesses in people’s personal security and identify opportunities to attack their enemies,” it continued. Oh, the irony.
For legal reasons, I couldn’t possibly suggest that RSF – with their stated aim of deposing our (admittedly rubbish) democratically elected government by fair means or foul – harbour any malicious intent. But recent events in the North show their mates in the CIRA (Continuity IRA) most certainly do. With that in mind, methinks RSF best step out of the glasshouse before they start flinging stones. Or worse. A word of advice, chaps – just wear your balaclavas all the time and you’ll be grand.
That said, and much as it sticks in my craw, I do have to agree with RSF that the whole notion of sticking photos of everything on the interweb for all to see is not necessarily a good thing.
Street View provides criminals with a level of information about the area around potential targets previously only available through risky stakeouts. So surely burglars, bank robbers, car thieves and other gangsters, republican or otherwise, should be welcoming it with open arms?
There’s not just the security aspect; there’s the capacity for global ridicule. Of course, Google claims to have addressed privacy concerns, saying people’s faces are blurred before they are published on the internet. It also says that anyone concerned that a photo may contain inappropriate content can report this to Google and have it removed.
That didn’t help one chap, an unfortunate Australian fisherman who got roaring drunk after a mate’s funeral and passed out outside his house in Melbourne just before Google were filming in the area. Anyone viewing the street could see Bill’s prone form in all its glory.
Despite his face being obscured, anyone who knew Bill had no doubt it was him. Within hours, he was all over the internet like flies over a dead horse.
When he discovered he was famous, Bill was unimpressed. “I’m not too happy about it. I mean, I shouldn’t have been in the state I was in but I wasn’t thinking there would be someone driving by with a video camera on the roof filming me.”
Nobody does Bill, nobody does. Google has since removed Bill’s image. Whether it has restored his dignity or not is unknown.
In the wake of Google’s photographing of the US and other countries, a website called Street View Fun (streetviewfun.com) has become a cult hit.
The Top 100 is a real eye-opener, featuring images culled from Google of everything from a plethora of half-naked girls to people relieving themselves in public, a burglar climbing up a balcony and even a teenager firing a gun at some dude on a Chicago street.
The moral of this tale: if you see a black Astra with a camera on the roof, pull up your trousers, hide the drugs, your neighbour’s wife and your I Love Fianna Fáil T-shirt and look busy. You never know who might be watching.