There has always been a shared interest between businesses and the government and businesses in monitoring the general public. In 2007 Google shook things up regarding privacy and surveillance with a new feature offer through their Google Maps service called Google Street View. This new feature allows anyone on the word wide web to be able to be able to view people’s homes from a 360-degrees angle. I have interacted with this feature many times and it gives the user a real life close and personal view of the searched or pinged location. Naturally, this raised concerns as I can imagine it felt like anyone with internet had access to peep in your windows without being noticed. If peeping on one another in the physical world is not socially or legally acceptable then why is what would normally be considered an intrusion being normalized in the digital world?

Next thing you know Googlemobiles are being spotted all over the world collecting addresses, images of homes, pets, vehicles, license plates, streets, and in some instances people to be uploaded causing uproar and retaliation all over. While I personally do not agree with United Kingdom’s information commissioner, Christopher Graham, who rallied for Google to switch its defaults to opting in versus putting responsibly on the user to opt out. In this case analysis I will argue that Utilitarian Consequentialism shows that Google should have given individuals transparency and the choice to initially opt out of Google Street View uploading their data.

            According to Floridi people are considered inforgs that function within the shared infosphere. Inforgs are living beings withing the infosphere and the infosphere is the realm in which information is exchanged. Each inforg has a certain level of informational frictions associated with them individually. Informational friction refers to the forces that go against the flow of information within a specific area of the infosphere. Innovative technology like Google Street view aid in reducing the amount of informational friction between individuals’ personal lives and the rest of the word due to the internet’s borderless nature. How did Google Street View reduce informational friction? Google’s new street view feature greatly reduced informational friction by making images of people’s homes accessible to anyone with internet, this feature increased the exposure and accessibility to each other’s personal information. Personal information such as home images, addresses, vehicle images, pets, and blurred images of people were made available to the public. This information alone is not a big threat, but when the information from Google Street View is used in combination with other cybersecurity tools in the wrong hands could lead to one’s personal information being compromised. This is an issue because compromised personal information can lead to a breach of physical, mental, information privacy, and more.

            By Google not making Google Street View simple and clear to opt of out it put many individuals’ privacy at risk without their consent. According to Utilitarian consequentialism an action is considered right when it increases the amount of good in the world, and considered bad when it increases the amount of suffering. Google Street View initially caused uproar and concerns, and many were uncomfortable and felt it was too invasive. This feature could also be used as a tool to aid in violations such as robberies, stalking, and other crimes. While the feature is a very convenient tool when used positively the same can also be said for someone using Google Street View with malicious intent increasing the overall suffering of the world. There were a lot of negatives surrounding the feature during the release which from a utilitarian perspective is not a positive outcome because the majority was not benefitted by Google’s actions at release. For the Google Street View’s release to be ethical Google should have explicitly provided information on how to opt out at inception due to the privacy risk (potential suffering) associated with having one’s personal information freely available online.

 It has been seen repeatedly that the impacts of informational breaches can be harmful to one’s physical safety, financial security, and mental health. At least by presenting the opt out option up front it makes the feature less concerning knowing that the individual has control over whether their information is made available in the first place. However, Google’s default was to opt everyone in leaving the responsibility of the individual to opt out any time. The problem requesting with this method of requesting to opt out or correct an image is that it takes a few steps of effort also the timeframe for the request to be completed can take hours to days. This means personal information is available online till an individual notices, reports it for Google to remove the image or complete the opt out request putting individuals at risk resulting in a negative consequence due to Google’s actions with the roll out of Google Street View.

            Grimmelmann argues that current data regulation laws are more so centered on the flow of personal information, but current data privacy laws do not consider how individuals use social media platforms. While Grimmelmann’s argument centers on the privacy safety of social media platforms, this line of reasoning can be applied to any online service that collects personal information like Google Street View. Product safety transfers liability to the seller for distributing harmful goods. Product safety legislation holds sellers accountable for harmful good incentivizing sellers to create safe or unnecessarily harmful goods. Grimmelmaann would argue that privacy safety transfers the liability to the company for releasing an online service or product that compromises an individual’s privacy.

 In line with Grimmelmann’s perspective I think that it was the basic responsibility of Google to make the Google Street View feature safe and that they should be held liable if an information breach were to occur using the feature. Google disregarded this responsibility by using Google mobiles to do random drive by photo shoots to collect their data and uploading them without any integrity review prior making Google Street view an unnecessarily unsafe product. Regardless of if Googles motive was innovation, convenience, notoriety, or financial gain according to direct consequential an act is determined morally right based on if the consequences of the act itself. The negative consequences that come with a privacy breach due to personal information being released online using street view would be a direct consequence of Googles action of uploading the images. There were better alternatives to the decision such as having individuals review the images prior to them being posted to prevent embarrassing or revealing images from being uploaded.

In closing technology will always continue to advance and push the boundaries of privacy there will always be a trade off between the two. While technology advancements should not be stunted individuals should be presented with the option to opt out of their personal information being uploaded and it should be expressed explicitly how to do so. Google’s choice to be rather vague around image removal and opting out when street view released was not ethical from a utilitarian perspective due to their actions of uploading images with personal information and the negative consequences that can result from that do not align with increasing the amount of good in the world. Google could have considered Luciano Floridi’s idea of informational friction and consider negative consequences associated with reducing information friction between individuals and others around the world with online access. Google could have also incorporated James Grimmelmann’s concept of applying product safety regulation to privacy safety. Did Google fully think about the safety of the images that were uploaded if compromising images still were accessible on Google Street View. Google Street View’s default being maximum exposure with unclear options to opt out has many negative consequences associated with it that I do not think Google fully considered at the time or releasing this feature.

References

Floridi, L. (2014). The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford.

Grimmelmann, J. (2010). Privacy as Product Safety. Widener Law Journal, 19, 793–827.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2012). The Googlization of Everything: (and why we should worry).

University of California Press.