Peeping Toms

It’s a little scary what a person can do with Google Earth.

There are two ways to utilize this creepily all-encompassing satellite imaging service. One is to type an address into your web browser’s search bar and use Google to navigate a specific selection of streets. Usually people do this when they’re about to visit that hot new sushi place for the first time, and want to know what it looks like, where to park, and whether there’s a nearby Arby’s in case they realize raw fish is disgusting. It’s a handy tool.

Fore hardcore users with way too much time on their hands, there’s the downloadable Google Earth software. It’s free, and I highly recommend it to all government spies, peeping Toms and would-be stalkers. It’s the same concept -- navigable satellite imagery -- magnified by a thousand. The first thing you see when you fire up the program is our beautiful blue planet rotating in the black expanse of space; zoom into to any location on the globe, or type in an address, and you plunge through the Earth’s atmosphere, hurtle toward your virtual destination, and there it is: Paris, or San Francisco, or Tupelo, Mississippi, ready for your digital exploratory impulses. You zoom in and out, rotate the map, and even view the terrain from the ground in 360-degree photographs taken by roving Google vans. It’s the world on your screen.

And it’s disconcerting.

I say this as an enthusiastic user. While many people do productive things during their free hours -- tending gardens, say, or learning a language -- I spend an unhealthy percentage of my non-work time fussing with gadgets and taking virtual tours of places I’ll never visit. Sure, I could buy a plane ticket to Rome, peruse the Piazza Navona and walk the cobblestone streets until my feet turn into useless lumps of throbbing flesh. Or I could make a few clicks and chill at the Vatican while sipping hot chocolate on my sofa and picking at the eroding soles of my Daffy Duck slippers. There’s a certain liberation in gazing at humankind’s wonders while scratching at manly body parts in a completely inappropriate fashion.

Despite all that, it sometimes strikes me how absurd it is that a simple laptop can grant us this kind of power. In a public setting recently, I overheard a man chatting on the phone about a house he’d just bought, and during the conversation he happened to mention the street address. With my computer handy, I punched the address into Google Earth and rotated the camera above his new home, taking in its pine-ensconced backyard, and the curlicue driveway that resembled the spit of hair on Superman’s forehead. In a stupor of drunken privilege, I shocked myself with the following thought: “This is wrong. It’s a total invasion of priva-- ooh, a rosebush! But no, this is wrong.”

Thankfully there are limitations to the technology. The satellite images aren’t in real time -- often they’re a few months or even a couple of years old. You can’t look inside people’s windows (the resolution won’t allow it), you can’t grab anyone’s license plate number (they’re blurred out), and the areas that are viewable are generally limited to public places that you could readily see if you up and went there yourself (like Disneyland!). In other words, you can’t spy on your girlfriend’s apartment to see if there’s a light on in the window. I’ve tried.

What you can do with the program is more than enough, and maybe a touch too much. I won’t go into all of the potential mischief one could get into, because that would be irresponsible, and it would also cut into the sales of my companion guide, “101 Ways to be Creepy as Hell.” Suffice it to say that the only person who should be allowed to zip from Sydney, Australia to Montreal, Canada in two seconds flat is Superman. And only then if he has a chaperone. Hawkman, get on that.

Invariably, when having conversations about the encroachment of technology on privacy, someone will say, “Big Brother is watching.” It’s a reference to the George Orwell novel “1984,” which envisioned a future besieged by omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation. Great novel, but people reference it far too readily. The surveillance camera in the burger joint’s drive-through lane isn’t “Big Brother watching.” It’s pimply Chad Fitzsimmons watching to make sure you don’t defile the plastic clown.

Google Earth is a different matter altogether because it democratizes the use of satellite imagery for potentially indiscriminate purposes. The images may not be live, but they’re uncannily accurate. Buildings pop in three dimensions; streets and alleyways wend and curve with to-the-centimeter specificity. It’s a great tool for snipers. And muggers. And snipers of muggers.

It’s not Big Brother, but it’s within shouting distance, so maybe it’s time to start thinking about what the limitations should be. Because the technology is doubtless going to grow. It has already. When I first downloaded the program several years ago, the only buildings that appeared in three dimensions were the iconic structures of the major metropolitan cities -- your Sears Towers and Prudential buildings and Arcs de Triomphe. Everything else was just a flat satellite picture taken from space, no matter how much you rotated the angle. Now, when you zoom in to about a pidgeon’s cruising level, you see that not only are most of the buildings rendered in 3D -- including the single-story homes in no-name backwaters -- but even the flippin’ trees are standing tall, in true pop-up book fashion. This is likely due to some kind of algorithm, which is a word I use when I want to sound smart.

So to stem any privacy issues arising from the inevitable technological advancements, here are my recommended limitations: Don’t ever make the images live; don’t ever make it possible to zoom in on objects smaller than a two-car garage; and please, for the love of Pete, don’t send another Google van by my house until I’ve had time to get my car repaired. There’s a nasty dent in the rear fender, and I’d hate for Mom to find out.