Day: December 22, 2008

Google Street View, the keen-o application that allows anyone around the world to check out a 360-degree-view of selected city streets, is under attack by a group of angry Japanese lawyers and professors. They’ve asked Google to shape up and ship out (though, mostly ship out) their street-level images, stating it violates privacy rights.

Real life Power Ranger and professor of law at Sophia University, Yasuhiko Tajima states that, “We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing deeply violates a basic right that humans have. It is necessary to warn society that an IT giant is openly violating privacy rights, which are important rights that the citizens have, through this service.”

Thank you Japan for telling me that walking down the street violates basic privacy rights.

Thank you Japan for being so crazy that you’ve got creepy vending machines, but having a random glance of a sunbather is not kosher.

Thank you Japan for deciding that those that walk out of strip clubs have rights too. I mean, they do, but if you’re OK with walking into a strip club, shouldn’t you be just as OK with walking out of one?

Who knows how long Google might exist in the future, or what the outcome of these pictures might be, but this is human history here. They are cataloging the streets of what life was like in 2000; just imagine what it would be like seeing these images 100 years from now, or even a 1000 years from now.

Next stop-the phone book! That horror of evil is next!