To begin this analysis we must first take a look at the scenario that is brought up by Vaidhyanathan, and that is that the implementation of Google Street View was done very poorly. In his paper he discusses the reasons and examples as to why GSV is, in essence, a scary tool. He does this by giving examples of various countries and people that have issues with the way that Google handled the privacy of the people that are shown in some of the photos that were taken. He does, however, also state that some people, mostly those who are fluent with technology, that GSV is a useful and helpful tool. He ends his paper with a discussion with a Google representative, and in this conversation he says that most of the uproar dies down within a couple of weeks. In this case analysis I will argue that Utilitarianism shows why Google’s decision to implement GSV the way that they did would be acceptable from the perspective of a utilitarian. 

To begin our analysis of GSV and the implementation of it, we need to get a sense of what it means to have privacy and why people care about it so much. Luciano Floridi has a great paper that details “information friction”, it is a concept that describes scenarios where the difficulty of gaining information about others is difficult or not depending on the scenario itself. An example of informational friction would be to use a house, and its walls. Imagine that this house has two or more people that live inside, now imagine that each room of the house was soundproof and the walls were very thick. This means that each person of the house cannot see or hear each other, thus creating high informational friction. The opposite is a house that has no walls and everyone can see everything, including each other. This is a low informational friction house, meaning that a person could see and hear everything that another person is doing.

When we look at the implementation of GSV through the lens of informational friction it is important to discern which of the two states of informational friction it would fall under. Judging from the examples that are given in the paper about GSV, it is understandable to make the inference that it would classify as a low friction scenario, seeing that people’s privacy was infringed upon by a car taking pictures of their homes. There is mention that many people had photos that they would not typically ever want anyone to see, especially of the embarrassing variety. In addition to this, many people were alarmed that these photos could, if used by the wrong individuals, allow people to look at a neighborhood or the individuals of said neighborhood and profile them. After viewing these examples through the lens of informational friction, I believe that it is quite easy to classify this specific scenario as a low friction situation.

Now let us look at this case through the eyes of a utilitarian, when analysing this case using a utilitarian mindset does the situation become different that what most people would think. The answer is yes, a utilitarian views choices as good or bad based on the overall happiness that is created based on the outcomes of that choice. This means that from a utilitarian perspective, the implementation of GSV done in this way is justifiable based on the grounds that while some expressed issues with the way that it was done, in the long run it will lead to the overall increased happiness of people as a whole. However this is about the implementation at the time, not what would happen in the future, under these circumstances and using the feel of the paper, I believe that at the time, a utilitarian would have taken issue with the decision. Once again, a choice is deemed good or bad based on the happiness that it brings, and Google did not have many happy people with the implementation of GSV in the early 2000’s.

Now let us take a look at the GSV issue using a different idea, that of Privacy as Product safety. The paper that Grimmelmann uses to talk about this idea tells us that privacy law should be created with the same mindset that product safety law is created with. The overall argument is that privacy is something that people care for greatly, but many times it is infringed upon in various different ways, and it is usually handled with an apology only. The example used in the paper is that facebook created a newsbook that had all of the information of people in a network available on the homepage of the site. This meant that if you lived in New York, every single person using facebook that also lived in New York could see what you posted on your facebook page. The solution to this problem is to view people’s privacy as a product, thus when it is infringed in this manner people can claim that facebook is designed defectively deliberately.

Taking a look at the implementation of GSV using this concept, can one make the claim that Google designed GSV as a defective product deliberately. I believe that that argument could be made, when GSV was first introduced it allowed for people’s privacy to be exposed to anyone and everyone who used the service. This allowed for people to potentially find embarrassing photos of people to use as a way to blackmail them, it also allowed criminals to look at every home in a neighborhood, essentially letting them scope targets without ever actually setting foot there. This was not the worst part however, as Google said that if people wanted photos removed then they would need to first tell Google themselves. If a person used GSV regularly then the likelihood of them finding a photo that they wanted removed was high, but for those that did not use GSV, or those that did not use the internet much at all, it was a significant problem.

Once again looking through the eyes of a utilitarian, and using the concept of Privacy as Product Safety, is the decision that Google made in regards to the implementation of GSV a good choice. As I have previously stated, a utilitarian views choices made through the lens of greater good and happiness, this means that while it might eventually lead to greater happiness in the long term, the implementation of GSV is what concerns us. I think that at the time that it was implemented, a utilitarian would not have found that the decisions made with implementing GSV would be good ones. As stated within the paper by Vaidhyanathan, many countries and the people that reside in them did not react with positive emotions when GSV was first implemented, meaning that from the perspective of someone who was a utilitarian that was a bad choice simple because it lead to the less overall happiness of the people that were in those countries and the countries themselves.

In conclusion, when it comes to the implementation of GSV I believe that a utilitarian would not find the choices and decisions that were made by Google as right. However I do want to point out that, as I have stated in the paper before, over time I think that a utilitarian stance on this particular issue would change. I think this because when researching Utilitarianism, the theory itself states that any choice made is good when it ultimately increases the happiness for the most people. At the time of implementation the choice did not create many happy people, it did the opposite. But as we can see now, people do not care about GSV, and many people use it because it is so useful. This ultimately leads me to the conclusion that, while it was not so when it was first implemented, a utilitarian would find the implementation of GSV, in the long run, as a good choice that was made.