How Google is Googlizing Everything

Advancements in technology have been revolutionizing the world. Technology has been used by humans to simplify parts of life that people do not have time to perform. A recent predicament in advancing technology is the idea that Google is adding a street view feature to their platform. This feature allows users to get a 360-degree view of the area from the street. In the book, “The Googlization of Everything” by Siva Vaidhyanathan, Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses the two sides of the use of the street view feature from Google. Some people have used the street view feature to eliminate their need to take hundreds of photos of the area to develop a community design project. The downside of the new street view feature is the privacy concern people have with themselves possibly being in the photos and being able to be viewed by everyone around the world. In this case analysis, the perspective of consequentialism shows that Google should have eliminated individuals from their images before they uploaded it to their databases.

Luciano Florida’s Input on Privacy

Floridi talked about four different types of privacy, including physical, mental, decisional, and information, which are all either used or violated at some point in someone’s life. To start off physical privacy is achieved through the restrictions of other people’s ability to have any physical interaction with another individual. Another meaning is people respecting another person’s personal space or boundaries. Physical privacy is a pretty common type of privacy that people know to respect, the same goes for information privacy. Informational privacy is the restriction of personal information being accessed and viewed by people who are not given permission. Moving onto mental privacy, this privacy is the restriction of someone violating another person’s mental space. An example of mental privacy is the ability to restrict cyberbullies from being able to manipulate a person and making them self-conscious of oneself. Finally, decisional privacy can be closely related to mental privacy because it is the freedom of having any interference from the mental process of decision making. A violation if someone’s decisional privacy can be when social media tries to influence a person to thinking not believing in a specific religion is going to cause them trouble in the long run.

Taking a look at the issues that reside with Google, googlizing everything, is the violations of an individuals right to privacy. The main issue that Google is facing is with their street views and people believing their privacies are at risk of being violated. Floridi’s definition of physical privacy and decisional privacy would not relate to this issue because no physical interaction is happening, and Google is not influencing anyone to make any decisions with their street view. However, a person’s mental privacy and informational privacy are being violated. People who are walking down the street and do not want their picture to be taken, are having their mental privacy being violated because they can become self-conscious about how they look in the photo. Informational privacy is being violated because someone’s private residence is now able to be viewed by anyone around the world. “The problem with the blurring process is that a face is not the only feature that defines one’s identity” (Vaidhyanathan 2011). Even if Google blurs everyone’s face, their figure is still showing, and that is more than enough to identify someone. In the end, while Google is not violating every type of privacy, they are still violating someone’s right to privacy.

A Consequentialism’s Perspective

The definition of consequentialism is that every action that is taken by an individual or corporation has some sort of consequence. Google is no exception, however, does their action bring happiness to individuals while limiting their suffering? A form of consequentialism, called utilitarianism, views the consequences of an action as if they increase the good or happiness to the world while also limited the amount of suffering. Some people have used the street view feature from Google to help with their work, limiting their suffering of having to taken hundreds of photos of an area to use as a references later. On the other hand, people suffer from having their image or private residence now viewable by the entire world and not being brought any happiness from the new feature. If instead of blurring faces, Google completely removed the individuals from the photos on their street view, there would be no issue of violating a person’s privacy. A private residence is not much different from a satellite view as it is in street view.

James Grimmelmann’s Privacy Threats in Social Media

Applications like Facebook or Google allow their users to enter their personal information, it is understood that the organization will maintain the integrity and security of this information. However, it should also be understood that the user should not put something on the internet that they do not want other to be able to view or access, excluding banking information. The use of social media platforms, like Facebook are not initially dangerous but can turn dangerous if not used properly. “Hammers are physically dangerous; Facebook is socially dangerous” (Grimmelmann 2010). Similar to how hammers are not banned in society for occasionally injuring people, Facebook should not be banned because the user’s information is viewable by other users. It is the job of the policymaker of the IT team of the company to ensure that individual users do not experience any unnecessary dangerous. Grimmelmann also brings up the idea that it is also the responsibility of the users to control what they put out on the internet and if they want to allow platforms to access such information.

Google came out with their street view feature and started to face some backlash with some individuals even trying to sue Google for violating their right to privacy. However, in one case, a couple sued Google for $25,000 for damages and alleging Google had trespassed onto their property to get the photos of their house (Vaidyanathan 2011). The issue with the lawsuit was that the couple did not try to contact Google about trying to have the images taken down of their house, and the result of the lawsuit was that the judge dismissed it for that reason. Similar to Grimmelmann’s concepts, an individual should take their own actions to preserving their own privacy. It should not be up to an organization to work with their millions of users to make sure they are taking the right steps to prevent their privacy from being violated. The couple should have emailed Google expressing their concerns about their privacy is being violated and Google should than work with those concern.

How Consequentialism Views the Privacy Issue

Taking a new perspective of the situation, consequentialism acknowledges the consequences of the actions that take place by both the users and by the companies. When the user uploads every bit of their personal information onto social media, the consequence is that everyone can view that information. A company that has effective privacy policies in place will help protect the privacy of their users. Both the company and the user have their fair share of what they should protect when it comes to the right to privacy. To resolve the situation and bring a good consequence, the user should limit the amount of information they provide to the social media platforms. Companies should than take the information they receive from the users and store them on secure databases that are being protected by a professional cybersecurity specialist. These actions will prevent leaks of private information of the users from the company and prevent the users from providing unnecessary amounts of private information.

Summarizing the Issue Behind Google Street View

After reviewing all the articles for the case analysis, it can be concluded that the Google Street view was not intended to violate any privacy rights. To prevent the privacy rights from being violated, Google should have removed the individuals from their images before uploading, instead of only blurring the face. A person is not only defined by their face but also by their body shape and the clothes they wear. The people that benefit from the street view feature, were never looking for the individuals in the images but instead for a way to take a 360-degree view of the surrounding area for something like if they were to visit the area. A supporting perspective is a consequentialism’s point of view. Consequentialism views the idea of a street view feature as having the consequence of supporting more people than it is hurting others. While there is going to be two sides to every new piece of technology, the street view advancement is no exception, which side are you on in this debate?

References

Grimmelmann James (2010). Privacy as product safety. Widener Law Journal, vol 19, 793–827. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2673&context=facpub

Floridi Luciano (2014). Privacy: Informational Friction. The Fourth Revolution. Oxford University Press. 101–128. https://issc.al.uw.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Luciano-Floridi-The-Fourth-Revolution_-How-the-infosphere-is-reshaping-human-reality-Oxford-University-Press-2014.pdf

Vaidhyanathan Siva (2011). The Googlization of Everything. University of California Press. 98-107. https://www.mondotheque.be/wiki/images/b/b8/Vaidhyanathan_The_Googlization_of_Everythin.pdf