Brits in uproar over Google’s Street View

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

Google is one of the bastions of high tech here in the Silicon Valley, beloved by investors, used by nearly everyone and adored by governments and corporations alike for its data collecting on users. However, Google is getting some stiff resistance from one set of users not known for causing a fuss: the British public.

The British are the most spied upon citizens in the world with more government CCTV cameras aimed at them than there are Bobbies on their streets. Brits have what they not-so-endearingly call “food Nazis” and whom the government calls dieticians, knocking on doors in order to report, inventory and lecture to the occupants on their eating habits. Then there are the wheelie bin inspectors, who literally snoop through people’s garbage cans to make sure that the recyclables have been separated properly and that the occupants have not thrown away more than they are allowed on any given trash pick-up day. Bins may only appear and must be removed at specific set times on the bi-monthly pick-up schedule. Any infraction of garbage rules and regulations brings with it a hefty fine.

Then there are Child Welfare workers, who visit without notice and who literally steal children from loving families on trumped-up charges in order to hand babies over to wealthy, childless couples and/or homosexuals intent on “starting” families of their own.

Even trying to open a merchant’s bank account in the UK will have the registering clerk asking the applicant what his political orientation is for fear that the account might be a blind drop for terrorist money-laundering. Additionally, any bank transactions by anyone over one thousand pounds must immediately be reported to authorities.

However, the worst of the worst when it comes to government intrusion are the Health and Safety Inspectors, who have literally run amok in the UK, banning playground equipment, parades, country fairs, collecting firewood, dancing, smoking, midnight church services because someone might trip in the darkness, running trains or buses when it’s snowing thereby stranding commuters in city centers, and stopping firemen from putting up or taking down town Christmas decorations for fear that they might fall off a ladder.

So it should come as no surprise that the Brits are angrily resisting the non-governmental Google’s Street View service as more Big Brother intrusion into what’s left of their privacy. While Google’s Street View of American homes has been greeted with self-absorbed curiosity, their British counterparts are in an uproar. Brits are angry over Google’s Street View service showing naked toddlers playing at a family picnic, a Google camera car running down a deer then posting it on Street View, reputations ruined by showing patrons of pubs, sex shops and police arrests, and even ghosts popping up when least expected.

According to Simon Davis of Privacy International, which intends on legally challenging Google over Street View in the UK, “These images are being captured without people’s permission for commercial use, and we believe that it is not legally acceptable.
“They are also putting into place a system for updating these images in the future, and for storing the images digitally where they could be misused.”
But the biggest outrage has been reserved for Google’s craven removal of homes and streets housing the same hypocritical British political elites, who authorized all the governmental massive privacy breaking, socialist engineering snooping to begin with. Most notable is the removal of former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and lawyer wife Cherie Booth Blair’s town home for “security reasons” on Connaught Square in West London once they filed a “Report a concern” complaint.

The already established homeowners of Connaught Square did not originally welcome the Blairs precisely for real and not imagined security reasons. As the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair was US President Bush’s strongest ally among the coalition leaders whose nations were fighting in the Iraq War. Their united stand against Saddam Hussein’s role in financing and indulging in islamo-fascist terrorism made Tony Blair especially hated within the Islamic world yet the Blairs chose a townhouse in an area heavily populated by wealthy Arabs in London.

Because of the very real possibility of a revenge assassination, the Blairs Connaught Square townhouse has 24 hour security guards and CCTV police cameras trained on every house angle. The Blairs very presence compromised the security of their neighbors yet the Blairs objected to Google Street View because it was a breach of their privacy and security. If the Blairs had been truly concerned about security and privacy, they would have retired to a country estate, well behind closed and locked gates where the grounds could have been thoroughly and securely patrolled. Instead they opted for the convenience of London living in the posh Mayfair area, demanding all the privileges of personal security but objecting to the prying eyes of mere mortals.
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Ann “Babe” Huggett is the Associate editor and Publisher of TheRealityCheck.org. She is also co-owner and moderator of Free Britannia.org, a conservative British-American site dedicated to events affecting the Anglosphere.

Starting in 2001 and based on her political essays which appeared on grass roots conservative web sites such as The Reality Check and American Daily, in 2003 Ann became the Senior Writer and Political Analyst for Digital Freedom Network, a small conservative Think Tank in Newark, New Jersey. Ann covered news events relating to the cause of freedom and democracy in North America, South America, and the EU. Her articles were picked up by the State Departmentís OSAC Newsletter, the Knight-Ridder and Gannett news agencies, and the websites for Jewish World Review, American Cause, American Patrol and Townhall.com.

In 2004, due to her political writing, Ann was accepted as one of 30 international entrants in Londonís Centre for Civil Societyís The Frederic Bastiat Award for Journalism Promoting Liberty.

Ann is currently appearing as an on air radio talent as ìBabeî Huggett, with co-host Warner Todd Huston, on Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Conservatism on Blog Talk Radio every Thursday at 11:00 pm ET. She is happily married to her greatest passion – a wonderful British expatriate – John Huggett, whom she met on the web in 1999 and married thirteen months later at the Marylebone Registrarís Office in London, UK.

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