The Angry Exile: Google Street View in the UK

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Monday 23 March 2009

Google Street View in the UK

Since it came to Oz about a year ago I've already heard all the arguments for and against, but I expected that when it hit the UK I'd hear them all over again in the British press. And since it's only in parts of the country those living in the three quarters or whatever that isn't covered can obsess and worry about it for months to come. Let me save you the trouble.

Google Street View as far as I can tell is pointless. I've played, looked at my house, looked at local landmarks, tried and failed to find a picture with something funny happening, tried and failed to find a picture with a tram in it, got bored, realized that it's a total waste of time, stopped. That process took a couple of hours. I still don't know what the fuck I'm really supposed to do with it. Google Earth has been very useful to me and the combo map and imagery of Google Maps can be just as handy. For example, with Google Maps I can show you where Senator Conroy's Melbourne office is:

View Larger Map
What more does Street View tell us? We already know the road name from zooming in on the image or clicking the map button, and we'd need that to put into Street View in the first place. It'll tell us what a building or an area looks like from ground level but I haven't quite figured out why Google thinks I give a shit. If I'm going there anyway I'll find out, and if I'm not what do I need to know for? And then there are places that the Googlewagons didn't go, such as outside Stephen Conroy's Melbourne offices. This is as close as they got:

View Larger Map
Now if you were planning to jump on a plane to Melbourne and go to Stephen Conroy's office to explain what a bad idea internet censorship is which of those two images would be most useful to you? It's a solution looking for a problem. That's point one.

Point two, look at that again and just imagine it was a residential street rather than a main road in central Melbourne. Okay? Private houses on the web for anyone in the world with an internet connection to look at. So - fucking - what? It's a public road, the houses are in plain sight, photography isn't illegal. Where's the privacy issue? I can walk along any public street and take a photo, better quality than Google too, and no one thinks it's invasive. I can take a photo at each end and one in the middle and that'd be okay too. I can take a bunch of photos of different angles all the up and down the street, and I can come back the next day and do the same in the next street over, and while you'd be within your rights to ask me why you wouldn't be within your rights to tell me to stop. So where do you draw the line? Is it the systematic approach Google has used that makes the difference? So doing it on foot is okay but roof mounting cameras on a car and doing what Google could be declared illegal. But Google could then do it on foot and achieve exactly the same thing, but much more slowly and at greater cost. Or are people bent out of shape because it's a company? Ban companies then. But professional photographers are companies too.

The bottom line is, as pointed out by the Indy, any law you can think of to prevent Google doing this is going to bugger someone else up as well, and probably lots of someone elses. Instead accept that a reasonable expectation of privacy does not include any part of you or your house that's visible from a public place. if I can go there and look then I can't see why someone can't go there and photograph. This is not telephoto lenses through the letter box, it's cameras nailed to a car outside driving down the road. If you want total privacy then dig a hole and build your house in it, and never leave without putting a burqa on first.

UPDATE: No one will see you having a shit.