obligatory obscure reference

I wish this were in The Onion and not the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A national children’s advocacy group is pushing to get Pittsburgh removed from the Street View of Google’s map search until the technology is refined so pedophiles can’t use it to pinpoint children’s homes, schools and playgrounds.

Street View, an addition to Google Maps that uses vehicle cameras to take 360-degree, street-level views of neighborhoods, allows users to virtually cruise down a street and across a city. In the process, the tool shows pictures of children, toys and family cars that could tip a would-be predator to an area where children could be found and potentially victimized, according to the group, Stop Internet Predators.
[…]

OMFG! I bet you could use Street View to find cars to steal! Or burglars could find houses with plate glass front windows surrounded by bushes that are easy to break into! Rapists could find bushes to hide in!

I mean, it’s not like people can drive around neighborhoods and find those things in real time, is it?

Sadly, this ignorance about crime is nothing new.

Quintilian, INSTITUTIO ORATORIA, II, xvi (first century AD):

“Doctors have been caught using poisons, and those who falsely assume the
name of philosopher have occasionally been detected in the gravest crimes.
Let us give up eating, it often makes us ill; let us never go inside
houses, for sometimes they collapse on their occupants; let never a sword
be forged for a soldier, since it might be used by a robber.”

[tags]google, idiocy, privacy[/tags]