In a well-publicized news story, a man was caught “on camera” exiting a "gentleman's club" when Google photographed him for their StreetView project. He later sued Google because the revelation was unhappy news to his wife. Do you think Google is in the clear when they photograph the view from streets in your neighborhood?
“Despite the very best efforts, and the most sophisticated technologies, we cannot control the spread of our private information. And we often want information to be made public to serve our own, or society’s purposes.”
It has become extremely difficult to shield our personal information and entirely protect it from the outside world. Whether it is a photograph that you get caught in the background of, a personal wall post on Facebook, or paparazzi shot, it is hard to stop our personal information from spreading across the media. There has been an ongoing battle between privacy and freedom of speech and Abelson predicts that these tensions will continue to get worse in the upcoming years. When it comes to Google taking pictures of the man walking out of the gentleman’s club, I think that Google would be in the clear because they were photographing a public place. However, if Google were to take pictures of the view in my neighborhood, I think that’s a little different. I find it unethical to publish pictures of people in the privacy of their neighborhood, even if Google were to say it’s under the First Amendment.
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I recently found my house in Google Street View. I wasn't home, so they're off the hook. :-)
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