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Street VIew Thoughts

If you want privacy, don’t invite the BBC !

broughton

The irony of this, surely needs comment.

So two upstanding citizens of Broughton (one of Milton Keynes “villages”) flag down a passing Street View car, have a chat with its driver and tell him to be on his way as they (on behalf of the rest of the village I assume) don’t want their privacy infringed by Street View images. 

An unusual occurrence to be sure, and one which you would expect would go largely unnoticed, because these chaps clearly don’t want to draw attention to themselves or their village because they “fear” criminals will discover that it is actually quite a wealthy part of the world, and run off with they plasma TV’s

So it’s a bit strange then, within days their names are in all of the papers and the wonderful Rory Cellan Jones of the BBC complete with his satellite truck is filming around the village for TV news, beaming live unblurred images into people homes all around the world.

If you really want privacy, why get on the phone to the media and invite them to descend upon your village?

Written and submitted from Sofitel Hotel, Athens Airport, using its wired broadband network.

13 replies on “If you want privacy, don’t invite the BBC !”

I couldn’t believe it when I saw this on the BBC. Makes no sense to get yourself interviewed by the BBC if you want to keep yourself anonymous… especially if you’re going to say that the area you live in is particularly affluent!

One of the guys in the BBC report said he is OK with CCTV, but not with Street View. I would argue that CCTV is far more intrusive on life than Street View, simply because Street View is a one-off shot, whereas CCTV is ever-live. Because the idea is to take pictures up and down the country, it is anonymous by dilution.

I’m sure it’s not the case, but I wonder why that *particular* village reacted so?

This just makes me laugh every time I read about it – the stupidity of these people, hoping to keep their homes secret, when all they’ve done is bring their village to the attention of every burglar in the land who wanted to know where the “affluent” houses are!

Apparently, “Street View enthusiasts [are] to sweep into action as a protest against the villagers.

“They have already begun posting pictures of the village online and used the photographs to post tongue-in-cheek ‘masterplans’ on how to plot robberies, by climbing on red phoneboxes and swinging off tree branches.

“..not only has the village now become the focus of national attention, it has raised the ire of Internet users, who are now campaigning for Street View enthusiasts from across the UK to descend on the village to snap their own perfectly legal photographs.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1166722/Watch-Broughton-Street-View-fans-plan-descend-privacy-village-photo-fest.html

By the way, is there any news on when the rest of Britain will go live with Street View? I need to plan some burglaries and need to check some out-of-the way village on SV before I go out robbing. 😉

Perhaps the news teams picked up the story elsewhere?

Should the residents do nothing for fear of alerting news teams? Besides, having both sides aired publicly will surely add to the debate.

And why put the word “villages” in quotes? Does the description, if inaccurate as is the implication, give less credibility to their opinion?

@Robt I just don’t see how else the media would have discovered this, the two gentleman also seemed keen to talk to the press despite their wish for privacy.

With the almighty weight of Google against you, who wouldn’t want to get their version of events into the media? I think this worries Google more than they’d be prepared to admit as it could inspire more to take action against unrequested intrusions into their privacy.

It’s a catch 22. If you get a picture taken off StreetView, people will wonder why – just as likely to be a target for criminals as leaving it up there.

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