We speak lightly of the “Google empire“, about Google’s “big brother” tendencies, and the many instances in which Google has acted “evil”. But as nervous as we may be, Google consistently uses their mass of data to develop better search products. Google does a phenomenal job of consolidating meaningful information and translating it into more relevant results. Furthermore, Google has consistently resisted government access to search records and has publicized users’ ability to turn off personal data gathering. We have been candid about Google’s collection of personal information because it has, to date, yielded greater benefits to us than privacy risks.

But in the past few weeks, Google may have finally crossed the threshold of Too Much Information. Consider the following:

“Google Partners with States for Public Information Search“: In April, Google announced that it will work with four state governments (Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia) to make public records more accessible. Information related to education, real estate, health care and the environment will soon be fully indexed and searchable, including social security numbers, financial records, health histories, and more.

“Google Image Search Adds Facial Recognition“: Last week, Google quietly added facial-recognition capabilities to its image search. By including the string “&imgtype=face” after a given search, Google will return only photos with recognizable faces. Ars Technica speculates, “one day Google’s image search may be able to find faces of specific people based on image analysis/recognition alone instead of relying on the text associated with that image to identify the person in the photo.” There are already image search services that do this, but they require users to upload their own photos for analysis. Google image search, on the other hand, already has an enormous database that could easily match names and faces.

“Google Street View Photographs Real People“: Yesterday, Google released Street View for Google Maps. Street View shows a 360 degree eye-level image of city streets, as documented by Google’s traveling camera. Street View has already captured thousands of recognizable people, including potential burglars, sun bathers, porn-store patrons, and even one dead man. It was all very entertaining until people began finding their own photos. Some ground-floor city residents are especially upset, like this woman, whose cat Monty was photographed through the window of her apartment.

So, mix Google’s searchable public records, facial recognition and car-side camera (that can take photographs inside your house) with the existing Personal Search History and Google’s extended data retention aaannnd voila! You’ve just created a stalker technology better than the combined dreams of Homeland Security, the Facebook Feed, and your Mom.

Fortunately, Google provides some helpful tools for concerned users:

• Submit Inappropriate Street View Content to Google Maps
• Request Content Removal from Webmaster Central
• Request Phone Listing Removal from Google PhoneBook
• Contact the Privacy Center with specific requests

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.