“If Google’s aim is to be master of all it surveys, then the launch of Google Street View in the UK brings it that much closer to surveying, well, everything.
“Privacy campaigners have made a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner about the service, saying that blurring of number plates and faces is insufficient to protect individual anonymity.
“Personally, I can’t imagine for a nanosecond what use anyone could conceivably make of Street View, unless it was something nefarious or criminal. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, assures us that the service’s success proves that people ‘love to see what is going on in their local community’. Can he really believe that it’s better to do this online, rather than simply walk out the front door? Because that’s what I, in my hokey old way, call a street view.”
Read the rest of Will Self’s Evening Standard column here.