Google and the New Surveillance Society

We have already highlighted some worries about Google Streetmapping as a surveillance tool, but it would seem Google Earth is now being used to spy on citizens in their own backyards - TechCrunch:

“Under the table” pools may be the catalyst of the next technology revolution in government. During last February’s economic collapse in Greece, the normally technophobic Greek government used Google Maps and Google Earth to find people who had craftily evaded taxes by failing to declare a pool.

Now Google Earth-enabled law enforcement has come to the USA. The town ofRiverhead, Long Island, taking a lesson from the Greeks, is also using Google Earth to track down about 250 “unpermitted” pools. And using the satellite imaging service has proved profitable, Riverhead officials have collected over $75,000 in fines from pool owners who never filled out the required paperwork.

While Google Earth was originally intended to help people find their way around, Riverhead is one of the first incidences of what will inevitably be many more cases of the tool being used by local and national governments to catch people evading their duties as citizens, unless Google somehow intervenes. We’ve contacted Google for comment on this somewhat alarming unintended use.

Google of course is shocked - shocked - that people would stoop so low and reminds us that Google Earth should be used for A Higher Purpose:

Google Earth is built from information that is available from a broad range of both commercial and public sources. The same information is available to anyone who buys it from these widely-available public sources. Google’s freely available technology has been used for a variety of purposes ranging from travel planning to scientific research to emergency response, rescue, and relief in natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti Earthquake

Of course, this opens up the possibilty an entire industry of fascinating new Surveillance Services. The Imagination runs riot with the mashups possible between Googlestuff and location based services, surveillance satellites and social networks.

In my more paranoid moments I start to think about what "cloaking" devices I need to put on my physical as well as digital footprints.

Update - the article has got quite a number of comments on TechCrunch - and here's the very scary thing: most commenters see nothing wrong about the surveillance and are sympathetic to catching "tax evaders" (those questioning whether pool tax is right are shouted down quickly).