Should Google Earth be able to take pictures of your house?
Posted by | Posted in Society Debates
photo taken from regmedia.co.uk
Should Google Earth be able to take pictures of your house?
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This is an interesting debate. I don't believe it's ethical. I remember way back reading an article that said criminals use Google Earth to study the houses they plan to rob and stuff. Also, they display your cars too, so it's setting yourself up for criminal activity. What I want to know is what use does it have besides entertainment for regular people?
It certainly is interesting. I feel my privacy is violated if they take my picture on my private property. If my car is in a public place then I guess there isn't a "violation" however, publication without my permission should be.
Hmmm, as an answer to the question – nope as I like privacy. However, since they have it already what is there to do about it?
Well, the government could pass a law banning it. It appears as if they update their images every once and a while because my house shows a car that I had gotten rid of months ago, so they could stop updating it also.
What is out there for the public to see is not private, therefore if google takes pictures of the OUTSIDE of your house – just like anyone who walk down the street can do – then they are not invading your privacy. That is law, and that law is protected by the Constitution, just like you are.
However, if anyone takes a picture of your house and posts it on the internet and gives private information about the owner (not just who lives there as anyone can find that out from the local phone book-public information) then that could be construed as invasion of privacy – depending upon the circumstances.
Just my not-so-humble opinion.
Land and property has all sorts of information already which is defined as in the public domain. For instance generally the purchase price of a piece of property is public knowledge, as is the identity of the owning entity (be it a person/family or a business), both through local registry and through more private listings like phone books. If the purpose of Google Earth were to post pictures online of our property such that people could invade upon our privacy as individual owners of that property, that would be different, such as by looking in our living conditions within that property's structures itself. A few lawsuits regarding marital infidelity to the possible contrary, I haven't seen this to be the case.
Even there the issue was the parked location of a car and obvious accusations of dishonesty, not necessarily by providing a clear explanation for the activities undertaken while at some clandestine and private location. Such as by, say, looking in through the window. If they were posting infrared camera shots of private property, we might have a case against it. They're just posting top down views of wooded lots and homes and the surrounding debris of our public life that anyone may access already.
Yes, it is public property and its not like anyone can use it against you.
What if my kitty cat was in the picture? That's invasion of privacy. I saw a lawsuit regarding something similar.
Well now they have street views, so that you can see what it would actually look like if you were standing right in front of the house. They are getting more intrusive with each update.
If you don't put a stop to something in the beginning "Sun Tzu", then it will spread too fast for it to be cured.