Storm Australian Severe Weather Forum
Severe Weather Discussion => General Weather - all topics not current severe weather. => Topic started by: Michael Bath on 06 August 2008, 09:17:15 AM
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Check out the latest addition to Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com.au/
Type in your address then click the street view button. They've taken photographs of most streets - wow !
MB
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Gee is nothing sacred anymore lol. That must be fairly recent as I can make out my raingauge in the pic (only added it during Feb). What an amazing addition, couldn't imagine the time it took to set that up.
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Holy crap theres my house lol! It must have been taken in the last 6 months because there is catalogs out the front of my house in bundles that I deliver, only started 6 months ago. Pretty dam amazing
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Holy sheet! I found my street too, Google have done a tremendous job covering thousands of kilometers of street views. I even found my old home back in Sydney.
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I wanna find one of those cars and follow it around all day, to get in every picture :)
I think most of it was done between 6 and 8 months ago
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Hahahaha, I can see the next door neighbour mowing their lawn. >_>
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This system is almost embarrassing to see they have mapped to the whole world your address. I see security issues in doing this - they now can map your size of house for instance to your address.
Regards,
Jimmy Deguara
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I'm non too pleased in some respects about the privacy issue also, and to make it worse Darwin does not exist apparently! They must have forgotten to send someone up here to map out the streets because we missed out.
I think that's a great thing because we're still safe from the outside world for a while longer!
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The only good thing is it was a couple of years ago - and not too recently - its not just privacy that is a point on this, what about terrorists and the security threats? and those who stalk people, perverts, pedophiles etc. For me, this is Big-Brother type of invasive tech. A worry when they can do it to the nearest second!
Big Pete
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Hi guys,
I was very surprised that they were allowed (or maybe not at the time?) to do this at all at street level? Perhaps some form of local approval should have been sought by Google before photographing took place. Google Earth is not so bad as it is fairly limited in detail, but when the same structures are shot a ground level where possible security setups etc. can be seen and assessed it becomes a far different story.
Cheers,
Shauno
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The images of my place were taken just a couple of months ago and Google are still continuing their photographic journey of the country. They'll get to Darwin soon enough Mike.
Only a couple of countries have street view.
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I think Street View is only available and the U.S and Australia, but they're trialing it in other countries at the moment...
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Overall, I think google maps is great. The reality is that people who are out to commit acts of terrorism and the like usually pick their targets and do their research, and will do it with or without google maps. As for pedo's and the like, well, same dif really, and it's hardly real-time data at this stage anyway. It does raise the questions though; will laws be amended such that AVO's etc include references to accessing online information?
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I don't really think there is enough info there to be of use to anyone planning something nasty. One drive by photograph does not tell you how well something is protected. Just what it looks like. And given the camera cars just drove down (mainly public) streets anyone plotting any harm could do the same. Just because you see an elderly lady outside a house by herself does not tell a would be robber that she lives alone. And while I haven't looked, I doubt it gives anywhere near the amount of detail about say Parliament House that any tourist couldn't get by a quick stroll around.
Actually the satellite pictures would probably be of more use to someone planning a terrorist attack as it gives you an idea of the building layout and what is around even in publicly inaccessible areas.
What can I tell from it? My ex partner's car was in the same driveway in Adelaide where she moved after the split whenever they took the photos, and her son was presumably out at work as his van wasn't there. And where I lived at Gosford 7 years ago had a blue car with a broken window parked out the front. Neither bits of information are particularly useful to someone planning something nasty.