@bojan: I’m glad you put “the wrong people” and “problems” in quotes like that. What intrigues me is that people seem to react to invented fears rather than any sensible analysis of potential risks.

One aspect of the reaction to Street View which intrigues me is the fear that some unknown person could be looking at your house without you seeing them. This was possible well before Street View, of course. We’ve had compact 35mm cameras for a nearly a century. Anyone could quickly take a photo and then peruse it at their leisure.

People who say that they’d notice a “suspicious person” taking pictures miss three points:

1. They imagine they know what a “suspicious person” would look like, i.e. the stereotyped criminal or Person of Middle-Eastern Appearance.
2. They don’t think about the ease with which photos can be taken. They think someone would be “hanging around” drawing attention to themselves, when of course they could walk past and take a quick snap — or even drive past with a video camera.
3. The Street View pictures are taken with a really obvious camera mount on car. Did they notice those pictures being taken? No. So what makes them think they’d notice someone who was trying to be discrete?

@yewenyi: Yes, there are mysterious bogeymen everywhere…

You mention the White Pages, but that’s about matching a human to the anonymous house in the street. Google Street View is unlabelled pictures of buildings etc, so as far as identifying anybody it makes no difference.

at my work everyone was delighted. people were going in there and trying to work out when the photos were taken. One man said, that there was a photo of a company’s van outside his house which shows it was taken on the one day that company was doing work in his house.

This is a new service. It will spark controversy etc for a little while until people get used to it. Just like any new technology.