Street View Sabotage! [Updated × 2]
Two more incidences of sabotage discovered - see the end of this post
Many people have voiced their concerns regarding the privacy implications of Google’s Street View service - but what if there were a way to “opt-out” of having your neighbourhood displayed online?
Yes, it appears that some enterprising resident of Fairbanks, Alaska, has worked out how to completely disable the Street View car’s onboard recording device! Even better, the process doesn’t involve any technical wizardry - all you need to do is stick a plastic bag over the top of the camera.
We can be quite sure this is a plastic bag too, because it actually says “plastic bag” on it. Unfortunately we’re not familiar enough with Alaskan plastic bags to tell you exactly what shop it’s from.
(Image rotated 180°)
The saboteurs must have been extremely quick on their feet of course, as the bag appeared without any warning while the car was travelling at speed along College Road.1
The bag remains in place for quite a long way actually - right along College Road, onto the Old Steese Highway and halfway up Minnie Street, where it finally disappears at the junction with Clara Street.
Hopefully the discovery of this exciting technique will allow privacy advocates everywhere to finally thwart Google’s endlessly evil efforts to provide us all with really useful driving directions!
Update: It seems those sneaky Alaskans are disabling Street View cameras with anything they can get their hands on - as proven by these images captured by a vehicle in Anchorage. Thanks to Alaskan in the comments.
Update 2: Again in Anchorage, commenter Barry from Alaska caught the Street View camera wearing what looks like a tin-foil hat.
Thanks to Alden.
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Unless… (cue dramatic chipmunk) - you don’t think the guys in the car put the plastic bag there deliberately, do you? ↩
Could this be a google car in the rain with a bag on the camera?
http://flickr.com/photos/zub/2112482515/
Or this one, when it isn’t raining?
http://flickr.com/photos/anthonut/1304552592/
BTW, speaking about Google Cars : I spotted one (with a Google Map sticker on the door) the other day, and I live in south of France.
I’ve seen on the internet they have been spotted in Paris too, as well as across western Europe.
Looks like Street View will soon be available to us fellow European
“The bag remains in place for quite a long way actually - right along College Road, onto the Old Steese Highway and halfway up Minnie Street, where it finally disappears at the junction with Clara Street.”
The bag is also present on part of the Steese Expy, 3rd Street, and for a few feet on 4th Street and Eagle Ave.
Hah, I submitted this a little bit ago, and was rather surprised to see it even got noticed!
From the blue ring and red letters, perhaps it could be an Esso bag?
Two pages of comments about a plastic bag on a car mounted camera!!??
You folks need to get out more and start worrying about things that are important.
Very nice…..I wonder how many people will do this now :o))
Googles photos are way too much for the web!!!1
@ Larry Dart,
Perhaps you ought to get out more instead of trolling people on the internet. Oh, how I loved the irony of your comment.
this is most definately a duane reade pharmacy bag
http://images.google.com/images?q=duane%20reade&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi