Street View

Street View is a Google Earth feature that lets users virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of high-quality street-level imagery. Here’s a video that introduces Street View feature.

This means that if you were outside the day Google sent its van to capture the images, you’re already on Google Earth! This is an issue of privacy and consent, may be that day you went somewhere you don’t want your friends and family to know. Even though the new technologies are so exciting and fascinating, they don’t make everyone happy.

I’m not sure about the US federal policy in regards to privacy laws but Street View is an issue for Canada, which will make things harder for Google to let its user navigate Canadian neighborhoods virtually.

“The street view application ‘does not appear to meet the basic requirements of knowledge, consent, and limited collection and use’ of personal information that is set out in Canada’s privacy laws, the (federal policy) commissioner wrote in her letter to Google’s chief legal officer…”

National Post, September 11, 2007.

This makes Canadians feel more secure, however, makes Canadian producers think about the distribution compatibility of global technologies in Canada. To me, this is not a big issue as it only deals with one feature of Google Earth but concerns me in regards to future developments that might relate to my entertainment product.

~ by Afzal Huda on September 27, 2007.