A gang of angry Luddites in Ye Olde Middle England have set upon an innocent Google Street View car driver in an attempt to save their lives from ruin.
"Angry villagers formed a human chain to thwart the progress of a Google Street View car that was in the process of taking photographs of their homes," reads a report in The Times.
Police were soon on the scene in the leafy village of Broughton in deepest Buckinghamshire with the "furious villagers" blocking the progress of the Google Street View car.
A burglar's charter
Local man Paul Jacobs, was quickly able to identify this moving threat to civilisation with its 360-degree snooping camera eye and was quick to warn his fellow villagers of the presence of the Google alien in their midst.
He warned the driver, telling The Times: "My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime.
"This is an affluent area. We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police."
Thames Valley Police confirmed that one of its squad cars "was sent to Broughton at 10.20am on Wednesday to reports of a dispute between a crowd of people and a Google Street View contractor."
World. Gone. Mad.
Via The Times
Your comments (12) Click to add a new comment
geezerkev
April 7th 2009
12. So in an attempt to protect his privacy, Paul Jacobs has attracted a large amount of media attention to himself and his fellow villagers.
Better still, he informs us how rich they all are. Burglars will be making a bee-line for Broughton.
If he was that frightened, why didn't he wait until the car had finished and then demand the results were removed from Street View?
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lovlid
April 6th 2009
11. The Daily Mail would already see the crowbar as some sort of phallic pornographic symbol, dont get them started.
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menelaus
April 6th 2009
10. Google are helping robbers already. Using Google shopping they can find suppliers of cheap crowbars!
Quick someone contact the Daily Mail.
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lovlid
April 5th 2009
9. Yes, its great for checking out specific "public" destinations. But private property is exactly that, Private. And saying it offers burglars no advantage is delusional. watcherzero is correct on every point. The first time a criminal is asked in court "why did you pick this window?" or "why did you choose that escape route?" and the answer comes back "Google", what do you think is going to happen next?.
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cbauman
April 3rd 2009
8. I guess I can understand both viewpoints but lean more towards supporting Google's efforts in creating the Street View. I just want to compliment techradar on their amusing coverage of this story (the picture that accompanies the story is hilarious). I needed a good laugh this morning.
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wolf
April 3rd 2009
7. In the US it took a while after the pictures had been taken to create an uproar. At this point it is effectively useless except for giving a very general idea of what the area looks like, which was the response to the uproar, even though the people that were offended by it had no legal backing for their complaints. I'm sure they're researched this thoroughly for the UK, but in the US there is no law against taking pictures of anything visible from a public space, with only some classified government facilities and high-threat targets as camera-free zones. As such, anything visible from a street is completely legal. There are some caveats for commercial gain, but these do not apply either.
At first StreetView was highly detailed at every zoom level. This originally made it possible to see into some windows (a cat in someone's window in Boston was a very famous one), crimes in progress (numerous), and other oddities caught on camera (there were numerous online news reports about them).
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