{"id":1112,"date":"2009-10-08T12:57:35","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T12:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2009-10-08T12:57:35","modified_gmt":"2009-10-08T12:57:35","slug":"street-view-and-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":"Street View and privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google&#8217;s Street View has just been introduced in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Many people consider it a &#8220;gross invasion of privacy&#8221; that someone can take pictures of their streets and post it on the Internet. &#8220;What if they see my car in my driveway?&#8221; they scream at the top of their lungs, as if Google broke some long established taboo by photographing a public street.<\/p>\n<p>But wait a minute&#8230; are these the same people who readily submit to having their laptops searched, its content, personal and business, examined and scrutinized, just so that customs can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/canada\/nova-scotia\/story\/2009\/09\/30\/ns-bishop-charged.html\">catch the occasional pedophile<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>For what it&#8217;s worth, I couldn&#8217;t care less if Google posts photographs of my street or my house. On the other hand, I am so concerned about real invasions of my privacy, I am willing to face the wrath of customs agents by using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.schneier.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/07\/laptop_security.html\">Bruce Schneier&#8217;s method<\/a> of laptop protection against unwarranted searches.<\/p>\n<p>Curiously, most of the people commenting on Schneier&#8217;s article completely misunderstand his point: it&#8217;s not that I have anything illicit or shameful on my laptop that I need to hide. That would be easy. It&#8217;s that I object to the <em>principle<\/em> of strangers going through my entire life.<\/p>\n<p>The really scary thing is that so many people, citizens of supposedly free countries, already adopted such a strong police state mentality: rather than looking for a lawful way to maintain their privacy, they are discussing various ways to break the law without getting caught. What I like about Schneier&#8217;s method is that it does not involve breaking the law: all my statements to customs agents would be truthful. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished&#8230; I&#8217;ll likely be harassed more than the smartalec who just creates a hidden partition on his laptop and keeps the visible partition sterile. But, at least I&#8217;ll suffer with a clean conscience, whatever good that does.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1112' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google&#8217;s Street View has just been introduced in Canada. Many people consider it a &#8220;gross invasion of privacy&#8221; that someone can take pictures of their streets and post it on the Internet. &#8220;What if they see my car in my driveway?&#8221; they scream at the top of their lungs, as if Google broke some long <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=1112' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,42,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-internet","category-legal","category-society","category-11-id","category-6-id","category-42-id","category-18-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}