‘YOU’RE SO 20th century,” a friend laughs, when I complain about Wii Street U, the new Nintendo app that lets us scuttle about neighborhoods, inspecting the homes of strangers like nosy crabs, without the bother of getting off the sofa.
Released on Valentine’s Day, Wii Street U is little more than a glorified Google Street View, only the views are magnified on our TV screens with 360-degree coverage. Digital home invasion is nothing new, thanks to Zillow.com and Google Earth, but the creepiness of it seems to expand exponentially with the resolution of the images. Our addresses, square-footage totals, and mortgage amounts have forever been public records, but have never before been presented as entertainment. Still, my friend assures me that I’m part of the shrinking few who care about this.
Comments
It took the Feds sixteen years to find Whitey.
if you believe that then i have some green ham for u. The feds set him up and protected him for 16 years until some rookies came along and changed the rules
It seems like the frequency of seeing home robberies during wakes and funerals has been on the rise lately and that is from information that has been public for a long, long time: obituary notices. It has gotten to the point where a friend, neighbor, family member or even the local police volunteer to watch the house so the grieving widow, widower or family can say goodbye without getting robbed.
Maybe the gap between those who are concerned about the lack of privacy is generational. Maybe it is based on something that comes with age but isn't specifically about age: wisdom. Or maybe it is just about living long enough to accumulate valuables, witness victimization by crime and know the difference between one's own business and everybody else's.
Those NY gun owners had every right to be concerned about their privacy but their neighbors should've been even more concerned. Either the criminals now know which homes to steer clear of for their own safety (and, conversely, which to target with less fear of resistance) or they know which homes to target if they want to acquire guns without the bother of background checks and permits. Either way the area is now less safe.
Google seems to make a concerted effort to recognize and blur license plates and faces in Streetview. It may have taken legal pressure to get them to make that investment but at least they're doing it now. If your license plate was clearly visible in Spokeo, perhaps they need to feel the same legal pressure.
Meanwhile you've got states that are desperate for revenue selling motor vehicle data to marketers. If the states won't protect your privacy, who will? epic.org is trying to fight for better protection of your data and is teaming with the ACLU and others to take the matter to the Supreme Court in some cases. Though you don't hear much about it, the ACLU also cares about gun owner's rights and civil liberties.
Our Constitution protected privacy for a reason.That the public's attitude makes this less of a priority currently is not a reason to abandon our laws. In a Utopian society with no predators and no crime privacy wouldn't matter much but then again, in such a society, publishing other people's information wouldn't be rewarded monetarily.