It just so happens you can see me in Street View, captured in the act of gardening, even though I am not a gardener. There I am in the red T-shirt, down in a monkey crouch with a spade in my hand. That lady over there is my wife (she’s the gardener), and that’s our neighbor, chatting while he watches us work the soil of the tree lawn in front of our house. I actually remember the day quite well, though I never noticed any car with a strange bit of apparatus on it rolling slowly past.

After the initial glissando of a weird feeling that ran up my spine when I saw it, I felt strangely at ease about my Street View presence. When I showed the printouts to my brother the lawyer, he was spooked, for some reason. (Maybe that’s why he lives in the exurbs.) Am I nuts? I mean, anyone walking or driving by at that moment would have seen us, and frankly, you can’t make out our faces. (Google says it pixelates car license plates and faces, but it seems the resolution of the shots we’re in didn’t require it. I know it’s us because I know us pretty well.) But still … am I crazy not to care?

I confess I like Street View. Just the other day I wandered along the street in Cleveland where I was conceived and gestated (my parents and brother moved into a new house the day I was born, so I had never laid eyes on that neighborhood). Didn’t see any people, though. In my virtual wanderings in DC and elsewhere, I like seeing the traffic and people going about their business. I don’t recognize anyone, and certainly no one recognizes me. Is it voyeuristic or creepy to go Street Viewing in Paris or Chicago, or is it simply the cheapest, most ecological way to satisfy a mild case of wanderlust?

Perhaps more importantly, does this give the lie to my previously stated concerns about government encroachments on privacy? I think not, but the devoted reader is free to think otherwise.

Addendum 2009.05.21: A friend alerted me to this page describing the Google Trike that is photographing scenic footpaths in the UK. A bicyclist like me, he says this would be a neat job after retirement, and I agree.

Addendum 2009.05.22: Here’s a nice article in the New York Times about the Google camera car and the buzz surrounding it.

Freedom is on the march everywhere. In my town, starting today you can look just about anywhere and smile into the camera. A friendly Homeland Security employee will take note. Feel free to give the “thumbs up” sign—they love that.

I am hoping all the cameras will be clearly visible and labeled, with a blinking red light. I want to make sure they catch my good side.

Voice offstage: “Mayday! Mayday!”
Second voice: “May Day?”
Third voice: “Get those two …”

I’m struggling with seeing the deployment of cameras in our local villages as being a benefit to policing. If it’s in our villages—are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation with cameras on every street corner? I really don’t think that’s the kind of country that I want to live in.

If it weren’t for his use of the term villages,* you might think it’s some “card-carrying member of the ACLU.” No, the speaker is Ian Readhead, the Deputy Chief Constable of Hampshire—the original, not the New one. He’s also the chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ data protection group. In other words, he’s a cop, and he’s worried about the surveillance society being created in Great Britain.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are at least 500,000 surveillance cameras in London, and the paper cited a study saying that “in a single day a person could expect to be filmed 300 times.”

Video surveillance in public places has not reached this level in the United States (as far as we know**) and its effectiveness has been convincingly disputed. Yet despite the obvious potential for mischief and misuse, there is no shortage of politicians and government officials pushing surveillance of law-abiding citizens as a tool in the so-called global war on terror.

We need more Ian Readheads.
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*I don’t think we have “villages” in the United States anymore, do we? I mean, if we do (if it’s part of a municipality’s official name— “The Village of Lombard,” or some such), we don’t actually call them villages—at least I don’t. We call them towns. A “village” in 21st century America is more likely to be a shopping experience, I’m sorry to say.
**Are there really only 15 surveillance cameras in public places in the District of Columbia? (Those would belong to the DC Metropolitan Police. We have a few other law enforcement agencies operating here, to put it mildly.)

It’s hard to describe the feeling one gets looking at them—they’re uncanny, creepy, transfixing … Questions arise: Is this what happens to our memories? Does a memory count if we haven’t taken a picture of it? Will a person step up and claim these memories—or rather, photos—and ask that they be removed from public consumption?

Long ago
it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you

—Paul Simon (Bookends)

[Hat tip to Fisc at Отдел обогащения]
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*This (and its sister blog devoted to found objects) may have been inspired by Found magazine.

“Oh, wow—I’ve been looking for this for a week!”

[Cartoon by Andrey Bilzho] (who? here!)

Bonus link: coverage of Sandra Day O’Connor’s speech at Georgetown University in which she warned of the danger of the US edging towards dictatorship if the Republican Party’s rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.