I don’t know if may of you have seen this yet, but I recently discovered a new feature of Google Maps named Street Views. It is very amazing because you can virtually drive down the street and see everything. This feature is only available in certain areas in the United States, but it does raise some interesting questions about privacy and information security.

I don’t quite know how I feel about it yet, it seems like a good feature, especially now that Andrea and I are looking for housing. It would be nice to “drive” down the street and look at the neighborhoods that we are interested in.

Take a look at this article that I found online today:

The Pentagon said that Google Street Views is a threat to national security and made Google pull images taken on streets near U.S. military bases. Google complied with the governmental order, even though the images were taken from public streets. Freedom of information and security butt heads once again.

The government was concerned that the images, which included views of the entrances to military bases, were a threat. Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the military command responsible for homeland defense, said, “It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings. I think that poses a real security risk for our military installations.”

But the images were taken from public streets, where anyone could walk and take the same pictures and/or video and post them to the Internet. The question remains whether the government had the right to request that the images be removed. While that question is assuredly being debated, Google complied. Google spokesman Larry Yu said, “We have been contacted by the military. In those instances where they (the U.S military) have expressed concerns about the imagery, we have accommodated their requests.”

Street Views has caused controversy from the start. Many privacy advocates claimed that even though images were taken in public places — where no reasonable assumption of privacy really exists — people were being exposed doing things they might not wish to have plastered on the Internet for all to see.

According to this Reuters report, “a man was pictured exiting a San Francisco strip club. In another case, a woman was shown sunbathing. Complaints have even included a woman asking that a picture of her cat be taken down, a request Google denied.”

This is definitely a thorny issue. The government has been eating away at various public freedoms and due processes for the sake of security. While I believe ensuring our protection is one of the federal government’s main functions, Benjamin Franklin’s words continue to ring in my head: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Article Taken from Information Week -

I am interested to see what others think about this issue and whether Google should be allowed to post these images to the internet or not. Leave a comment and let us know.

I have been working on the new template for the blog for the past few days.  I have a few errors that I need to fix, but as I have been working on it I noticed that I haven’t been doing the things that I need to.  Namely, I need to get my Independent Study Class done ASAP.  So I am going to use a new template for the blog for the time being and then in a few weeks after school is winding down, I will build Andrea’s Custom Blog.  It is very pretty so I will let you all know once it is completed and working.

Well, it is about time to develop a new blog template. Andrea made a new layout in Photoshop and now I get to put it together. It is a lot of fun to have the challenge of making someones vision a functional website. Also, it will be nice to have a new layout to look at. So keep you eyes out in the next week or so and we should have a new blog theme.