Response to "Hey, Guess What? I Can See You..."

This is a response post to "Hey, Guess What? I Can See You..." @ http://mwardmediaarts.blogspot.com/

Google has released yet another great free program; Street View. This is a great piece of technology as it actually lets you see the streets on a 3D point of view - a major step from the plain 2D bird's-eye-view maps that Google offers.

As mentioned in the original post, Street View has had some critisism on the privacy of the people in the compiled photos. Google has attempted to save people's privacy, but there have been pictures circling the internet about some regions of the world that people's faces and licence plates are not blurred out.

But I don't think Street View is a major privacy/security concern. Now I have to admit that I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist! So I assume that Google is not really after our faces and licence plates, but intentionally after our information, such as our addresses, age, health status, nationality, religion, political views, personal interests, accounts, and even genetic data. Take a look at this interesting, well-thought out video... pay close attention to 2:01 to 2:11.



Based on this video and other fact-based articles I have read, I have (and so should you) have reason to believe that Google is working to obtain as much personal information from us as possible, and not necessarily from Street View.

So you might ask, how does Google obtain info such as our interests? Well, have you ever filled in any of those boxes on social networking sites labelled as "Personal Interests"?. If yes, that information is easily obtained by Google because they basically have detailed access to every sector of the internet. So what about genetic data? Well, have you ever scanned your finger at the security & customs section of an airport? Have you ever used a laptop that requires a fingerprint log-in? If yes, ditto. The government probably has your genetic data.

Scary, eh?