Uncovered: Charlbury's secret Papist plot

Fri 13 Nov 2009, 11:09

I would have hoped it was obvious, but maybe not...

I'm engaged at present on a major literary project, a very small part of which involves photographing the houses in which a famous author used to live. These photographs are purely for my own personal use, as an aide-memoire, and I'm not seeking to commercially exploit them at all. If I do choose to do so in the future, i.e. by reproducing them in a book, then I will of course be writing to all the householders concerned to ask for their permission. However, someone I have met in the course of this work who works in the property business informed me that just by photographing these houses, without first asking permission, I am almost certainly breaking the law. I was completely unaware of this until it was pointed out to me, but I believe the person involved.

Now compare what Google are doing. They drive round Charlbury, photographing everyone's houses willy-nilly. They don't ask permission, there is no opt-out if one doesn't want one's house to appear on Google Earth and Google stand to gain financially, by way of advertising revenue, by displaying the images they obtain and yet householders are offered no remuneration. To me that is both an invasion of my privacy and an infringement of my civil liberties. There are clear security concerns here as well. Previously, a burglar who wanted to "case" a property had to sit outside it in a car, watching when the inhabitants come and go, and attracting suspicion as a result. Now, said burglar can sit in the comfort of his/her home and do their reconnaissance online. Oh how the criminal fraternity must love Google Earth!

We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society and few people seem to care about it. Because this is being done by Google, who also own an excellent search engine that we all (myself included) love using, this apparently is all fine and dandy. If the surveillance were being carried out by central or local government instead then there would be outrage.

I have read 1984 several times and enjoyed it but I don't want to live in it. Orwell said that if one wanted an image of the future "imagine a jackboot stamping on a human face for ever". What he got wrong was that, rather than a jackboot, it is in fact a nice hand-made brown brogue attached to the leg of the CEO of Google that is doing the stamping! It still hurts like hell nonetheless.