For those who don't follow the tech news, Google, along with the US Military just launched the highest resolution commercial satellite that has ever orbited the planet. Before we get into details, you might want to check out the story here: http://gizmodo.com/5046406/google-military+controlled-satellite-reaches-orbit-we-dont-feel-lucky
So what does this mean to all of us? Well, probably nothing at first, but Google has been given exclusive rights to the commercial applications of this new super-camera, and I'd say it's a fair bet that you'll start seeing some new Google Earth images in the near future.
But this post isn't about Google taking over the world. I've already decided that they will eventually, so I am just riding the wave. No, instead this post is about how Google is trying to get all of us to help them, and the government, keep track of everyone they might ever want to peer down at.
If you don't currently use Google's Picasa web service or desktop app to keep track of your pictures, you may not realize the sheer power they have put into that system. First, they started by allowing users to "geotag" their pictures. I fell right into it and thought it was a great idea. I was able to open any picture that I had uploaded to the Google servers and actually place that picture on a map, showing where it was taken. It gave me a way to organize my photos in addition to keeping track of where I had been and what I had done when I was there.
About a week ago, Google introduced a "face tagging" system for Picasa. Another great idea. Now, I can have Picasa scan all of my pictures looking for faces. It then tries to recognize people in the photos so I can assign names to them.
The first time I ran it, it found 372 faces in my collection. By my guess, those pictures contained about 20 different people, and Picasa did a better-than-average job of recognizing what faces were the same. Of course, I have a lot of grainy pictures, and picture of people staring up at the sky or making very unusual faces, so it asked me to tag the ones that it couldn't decipher. Now that I am done, I can go into Picasa and search for pictures by what people appear in them. Yep, still pretty darned handy for someone as unorganized as me.
But as I was sitting there assigning names to all of these faces, I started to realize that Picasa was getting smarter. Faces that, at first, were unknown, were now coming up with suggestions, and the suggestion were right a lot more than they weren't. I was basically "teaching" Picasa how to recognize my friends, from any angle, in any light, in any condition.
My mind flashed to the GeoEye (that's the name of the fancy new satellite, if you didn't read the attached post). Was I just teaching Picasa how to recognize my friends, or I was I actually teaching Google how to do it? And if I am teaching Google how recognize those people, was I actually teaching the government?
Okay, so now I've managed to teach the government, who owns the most powerful "spy satellites" in space, how to recognize almost anyone I have a photo of. And, thanks to all of the geo-tagging I had done in the past couple of months, not only do they know what my friends look like, they now have an idea of where to point their cameras to find them.
As I started to think about it, I started to really worry about the repercussions. Sure, I don't care if Google can find me. I don't even care if the government can track my every move. But do I have the right to do that to everyone I know?
Needless to say, I have gone back and removed every "face tag" I had created that wasn't of me. I'm going to have to trust that Google didn't hang on to all of those, but I'll probably never know. As the system gets more popular, I am sure that plenty of faces will be tagged, but I just can't help thinking of that ol' Trojan Horse; Just because it's free, and looks pretty cool, doesn't mean the army isn't hiding inside.
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