by Estella Tsui

Created on: August 08, 2008

Oh no to privacy... Google Street View is finally released in Australia... Just click on the Street View button on Google Maps and you'll see it in work. Is it a good thing or not to have such a technology launched in our neighbourhoods?

From a regular Australian Queenslander's point of view:

Some negative points:

- Say a thief wants to rob a house, he/she no longer needs to physically walk around the neighbourhood to observe the environment - because they can now do it virtually online using Google Street View. If they were to physically walk around, at least there's a chance that someone would spot any odd activity. But now it's like they can "walk" around the place invisibly.

- There are screen captures of children playing in the front yard. This one can become a serious privacy issue. It's nothing to do with whether or not you can see their faces. The problem is that the message "children live here" is now published worldwide.

- There's a web page called "Top 15 Google Street View Sightings" - Some of these are quite funny. But as you can see, even people walking in or out of adult shops were photographed. A thief in action was also photographed!

- In the past, say if someone gives you an address of where they live. An address is an address, so what. But now with Street View, people can actually look up your address, not just to see where it is on the map (well, there's a refidex in nearly every car so that's nothing private), but now they can actually see the HOUSE and the neighbourhood you live in; hence they can "judge" you by looking at what type of house you live in. Will this become a cause for discrimination or bullying?

And now some positive points:

- It's good to know that we now have the technology to virtually "tour" everywhere using the computer. It's one more step towards the future.

- When you need to go to an address, as you drive on the street, you don't need to slow down trying to read the number on each house - because you've already seen how the house looks like using Google Street View.

- From a real estate point of view, Street View can save tonnes of petrol. People no longer need to physically BE THERE to see a neighbourhood. They can see it first-hand online before deciding whether they want to actually GO to and review the neighbourhood or not.

Undoubtly this issue will be a hot topic until Google addresses an answer that's satisfying to people affected. Privacy has become a much bigger problem nowadays as technology advances on.

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