Bangalore orders Street View spy cars to stop it Bangalore police have asked Google to ground their fleet of Street View cars which had started taking pictures of the city. The search giant received a letter from police even though it claims to have contacted local authorities before setting the fleet in motion. A Google spokesdroid told the Times of India: "We can confirm …
Since just a few years ago when it was hard to get anything more than the sketch maps that featured in tourist guidebooks, or the simple line-drawing maps of major roads within states. Now, we carry digitised maps with detailed coverage (at least of the cities) on the GPS-equipped phones in our pockets, Google Maps has pretty good coverage, and (if you are that desperate) you can check out the solar water heater on the roof of my house in Google Earth.
However, National Security concerns are still very much a matter of fact. Consider who India's two biggest neighbours are. As noted, India is now pretty-much digitally available on the internet, but I always thought that Street View would be going a step too far, and was very, very surprised that Google had received any kind of permission.
There is also this crazy public-image thing that India seems to have, about the world thinking it is all modern IT Parks, shopping malls and tropical beaches. Which, of course... it isn't.
How far Google vehicles would get off the main roads, practically, even with all permissions, I just don't know. How the people who live on small roads, to whom the road outside their house is almost a part of their house, would feel about it, again, I just don't know.
For travel planning, and even travel substitute, Google Earth/Maps/StreetView is just wonderful. I'd love to see India covered. I'm not expecting it to happen though. And I'm not sure that it would be wise to let it.
I can understand that faces should be blanked, that's perfectly reasonable. You could even argue that surburban areas shouldn't really be in there, people in their preferred private dwellings but how useful is taking some pictures of a building in a public area, on a street really going to do to aid the average fundamentalist nutter?
"He might be able work out which doorway to attack!". Well he's organised enough to make a fricking bomb or buy some guns, so asking a mate to go down and make some mental notes about the building or go down the local Gov office, pay £5 quid and get the building plans, is a walk in the park from a resources point of view!!
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...The Reg's continual fulmination about street view to be bizarre, coming from people where not only are most streets recorded -live- (rather than once or at very large intervals), but the results are available only to the government!
It's a bit like complaining that an acquaintance has a photo of your living room from last year while ignoring the ten burly dudes digging around your couch cusions and rifling through your medecine cabinet.
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