You are being watched

A couple of years ago, I prepared a topic for the CBC Digital Archives website about video surveillance. From photo radar to COPS to September 11, police and government agencies have been using video cameras to catch bad guys. Every now and then Canadians complain about privacy issues, and are usually told that if they aren’t doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about.

As it turns out, it’s the private sector they should be worried about.

A week ago, a CBC-TV newsroom colleague pulled me aside to show me something absolutely amazing: Google Maps is adding a “Street View” feature that gives you a pedestrian’s-eye-view of an entire city from street level. Check out this view of Howard Street in San Francisco to see it in action.

In essence, Google sends a van with roof-mounted cameras to snap a 360-degree view of all major streets, then stiches them together in a seamless addition to their already powerful Google Maps system. Once you plunk your virtual self on a street corner, you can pan around in a circle, “drive” forward or backward using navigation arrows, or zoom in close enough to see what brand of sneakers people are wearing.

It’s a breathtaking piece of technology, and I can see plenty of uses - in addition to giving directions to your next party, you can show people what the house looks like; real estate agents can virtually show not just a property but a whole neighbourhood. Tourist bureaus will have a field day with it.

Now, Google has only done select locations, and only the major streets - and they’ve only snapped each view once. But I think it’s only a matter of time before the street views are captured more often (imagine Google teaming up with Canada Post, or something) or they are captured 24/7 with video camera installations. Live web cams are nothing new, and the Ministry of Transportation already does this for traffic. Why not Google, in high res?

There are many parts of the world where video surveillance is a given. London has around half a million cameras, recording people up to 300 times a day; according to Wikipedia, the U.K. has 4 million closed-circuit cameras - one for every 14 people.

So, be prepared. You can probably start assuming that if you are out in public, you are on camera, and being broadcast around the world. Pick your nose accordingly.

Of course, it’s more than nose picking that people might be concerned about. I spent an hour “driving” around San Francisco, and captured these vacation snaps:

Assume people can read your license plates, and know where you are parked:

Assume they are watching your kids:

Assume they know if you are attending Big Gay Movie Night:

Assume they know where your money is being delivered, and by whom:

:

And assume they know if you are considering taking the plunge:

This is all a little alarmist, of course - mostly what I saw was people going about their everyday lives, and a lovely city that I’d like to spend more time in. People are already assembling their favourite “finds” from these images, including the Top 15 Google Street View sightings - they’ve found girls sunbathing, men visiting strip clubs, and a homeless man who was later killed defending his dog Boo Boo.

The geeks in the crowd (raises hand) are a little obsessed with finding out what sort of vehicles Google is using. Everyone assumes it’s a van, and Boing Boing posted an image of a vehicle with four Nikon DSLRs mounted on the roof. (Sounds plausible; earlier I wrote about Nikons being used for a very similar project.)

But I don’t think this is the right vehicle. San Francisco is a sunny, hilly place, and in many street view images I notice the vehicle’s shadow cast on the road ahead:

Looks like a van, all right, but the cameras obviously have some sort of enclosure. So I then cruised the maps, looking for a reflection of the van. Since you can pan around the full 360 degrees, surely you should be able to spot it reflected in something.

And eventually I found it. Here’s a shiny Mercedes dealership on Bryant St.:

And when you zoom in on the roof, you see the camera housing, just like in the shadow:

This seems to bear out another van spotting posted on Streetviewr.com, a site dedicated to interesting sightings from these maps.

Perhaps I should have pointed out earlier that there are several other street view sites in development. Windows Live Street View has an interesting “cockpit” approach, putting you behind the wheel of a car to “Walk, Drive, or Race” through the streets using your keyboard.

Historically, maps give you a perspective of geographical information about a place. In Windows Live™ Local, powered by Virtual Earth™, you’ve seen road, aerial, and hybrid maps. Then, we introduced bird’s eye views to give you a perspective from above. Now, we want you to be there, right in front of the pizza shop you are searching for, in the street-side views offered by Windows Live Local. Even though you haven’t left the comfort of your computer chair, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

Their sample map is in Seattle (San Fran also available), and - no surprise - it seems to work properly only in Internet Explorer.

Less sexy, but closer to home is Virtual City, which has mapped out street level images of Toronto using high-def video cameras and a GPS device. It doesn’t stitch the images together in 3D, but it does have stills of both sides of all the main streets (click on the highlight feature to see if your street has been done). Here’s the Wellington Street entrance to the CBC building:

My sister was more than a little creeped out to find photos of the entrance to her house online here.

Finally, I wanted to mention another imaging site that isn’t strictly about street views, but all views.

Photosynth, another Microsoft product, “takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.”

In the sample demonstration, it uses publicly-available Flickr images of Venice’s Piazza San Marco and analyses them for shapes and perspectives. It then lets you navigate a 3D reconstruction of the location to see each picture, from the spot and angle it was taken.

Unlike the street view features, Photosynth is pretty heavy on the tech specs. It requires the installation of a browser ActiveX control, which takes a couple of minutes, and it doesn’t work on all graphics cards (including that of my reasonably new home computer, grrr.) If you can’t view it, at least check out the video of how it was made.

So, you can now visit CBC Toronto, stroll the streets of San Francisco or chase pigeons in St. Mark’s Square from the comfort of your office chair. But if you plan to do any of these things in person, look over your shoulder. Someone may be watching you from their office chair.

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 06-09-2007 | 02:06 PM
Posted in: Teh Internets