Big Brother, Inc.

It appears Google is extending its reach with yet another cool feature: StreetView. With Google, you just know this will be super useful. Even though Amazon has had something like this for several years.

So what happens if you're accidentally caught in one of the shots, and you don't want to be in Google's infinite database? Google will take it down for you right? Wrong. It turns out opting out requires you to send Google personal information.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, if we're caught in the background of some newspaper or magazine photo, there's not much we can do about it. After all, we're out in public, and public is public. But I think the problem here is that being caught in Google's StreetView ostensibly means that we'll be there forever, easily searchable, and in contexts that could be damaging to our privacy. Like women going to abortion clinics. Or people going to an HIV testing center. Or you going to a job interview while still employed.

Many people seem to agree that it should be an easy matter for Google to simply blur out people's features so they're not identifiable. After all, what value does it bring to the service to have people's faces in it? Instead, Google's making people jump through hoops to opt-out, and that makes me a little worried about the way Google is infiltrating our lives.