Saturday, October 09, 2010

(bigbrotherwatch)

The bodies of murder victims and those killed in fatal hit and run accidents have been captured and displayed in Google Street View images in Brazil.

Google has now taken these particular images down from Street View (though new ones are being reported quite regularly) - albeit not before they were captured and copied by enough users to ensure that they will remain in circulation.

Whilst I'm sure that their belated removal from Street View is an enormous comfort to the loved ones of said victims, I can't help but feel that this is yet another example of the fallacy of Google's policy, so often discussed on this site - that it, to take pictures of as much as possible, on a speculative basis, without consent, automatically put them up on the internet, and rely on members of the public to point out when they've done something wrong. The various naked people including children who have been captured and displayed online are one thing - one can accept inadvertence as an explanation there, albeit an inadequate one - but when it comes to dead bodies and crime scenes, you might think that it would make enough of an impression on the driver that he reported it so as to prevent these distressing images going online in the first place...
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