Online Privacy

The investigation comes amid concerns that social networking site Facebook has also breached individuals' privacy by on-selling users' information to advertisers.

Google is is trouble world wide with its street view.It seems very difficult though to get these internet giants to consult. The internet has so muddied the legal barriers that might becomes right. Books are digitised and put online and then countries find out and it's all fait accompli. Once done it doesn't become undone. Market forces or some other economic term are driving this and there is the compulsion at the moment to get everything online and to get everyone online. I don't know how far Switzerland has got with its court case and I don't know whether the American court cases will get anywhere with street view. People like and use street view, it's an invaluable resource, but the thing about number plates and faces and then data being accidentally stolen in the process is stuff which has to be addressed. Suddenly we are all  in a fishbowl and anyone can peer. I'd like them to come back and take a picture of my home again. It was taken at the height of the drought and it looks like it. If that is what people think Adelaide looks like they are wrong. It looks like it when we have a drought. So there is misinformation here which can only be corrected locally and Google perhaps needs to listens to Switzerland. The  want to know when the cars are coming. They want to be able to let Swiss people know when the cars will be in their area. Were this fair and reasonable, that is how it would go. The accidental wi-fi data collection on the way around is not reasonable. This is the sort of thing crowd powered media will have to fix because no single government will be big enough. Trouble with crowd powered media though is there can be total inertia on vital matters and then it relies on pushing it and getting viral hooks.