Privacy

 A friend entered my address into her I-phone recently to get directions to drive over to visit and was shocked to see a curb-view picture of my house pop up--with me sitting on the porch impatiently waiting for her.  That last part isn't serious, I'm joking, but there is a man sitting on my front porch in the picture that appears like he could be straight out of Deliverance. Can you hear the Dueling Banjos playing?

It's me, I remember the time I was sitting on  my porch surveying my domain when a car drove by with a google-earth logo painted on it which had a long upright rod attached to its roof with a rotating camera atop the apparatus.  It got by before I had time to react and give it the bird.  I value my privacy and I certainly don't want my ex to know what I'm doing or where I am at any particular moment.  But interestingly, my face is obscured in the image, which makes me wonder what kind of fantastic technology is in use here that can automatically blot out every face in the millions of pictures they must have with people in them.  I assume the faces of animals aren't obscured, although if a person were walking a dog and the dog was recognizable, a pretty simple inference could identify the dog walker.

It's a good thing my other girlfriend wasn't sitting on the porch with me at the time.  There is all kinds of inadvertent mischief that can arise from this--affairs exposed and families broken up, burglars thrown in jail, porch package thieves caught in the act, UPS drivers out of their area on frolic and detours.  

I don't think the photo is flattering in the least, the person sitting around looks like a sluggard without a care or a clue, and it's pretty easy to see that it's me given that the address is identified in the picture.  But I want to clear up one other possible misimpression--that is a cup of joe in my hand and not a can of beer.