I just can't believe all the negative news on the launch of Google’s Street View in the UK – people are labelling it an infringement on data protection, among other more sinister sounding phrases such as “invasion of privacy”.
It’s a bit like the ominous stories we read about in the press whenever they want to have a go at our industry – us with all the creepy information we have on UK households like: they have a car or they buy from mail order companies. Eeek shriek, what a terrible danger!
Then the same people that are sounding the alarm about even the most mundane data being kept complain about the irrelevant direct mail and other marketing communications they receive – but not conceding that you can’t target properly without data. Now they’re worried about some street scenes on the internet.
Isn’t it amazing that in a society that has more eavesdropping devices than anywhere else in the world, where you can be filmed making your daily journey to and from work, extracting cash from a hole in the wall, shopping in your local supermarket and speeding (or not) along the highways of England, we worry about geeky internet sites such as these.
Come on, what’s the problem? We have a government that watches our every move, records every time we take a plane abroad, stores our medical records – yeah, and loses them from time to time too. So why worry about Google Street View? It’s as innocent as we are, but maybe just a little more fun.
