Keeping watch

There has long been uneasiness about the degree to which we are scrutinised by the authorities, but with innovations like Google's Street View we are being urged to spy on each other. Advances in technology are not being matched by any heightening of scruples
Melanie McDonagh

28 March 2009

My paternal granny used to spend hours every day in the upstairs room looking out across the street on the neighbours at the other side. There was one house in particular that she used to scrutinise closely and there was little they got up to in the way of coming and going that she was not privy to. I have no notion whether the inmates of the house had any idea whether they were being observed, and whether, as cells under observation are said to do, they subtly altered their behaviour to take account of the fact there was an interested party just opposite.

Little did I know it at the time, but my granny was ahead of the herd. We are gradually acquiring the means to monitor each other in a number of interesting ways. The latest development is Google's Street View, which offers the opportunity to examine a particular house in a particular street in the towns that the site covers. Like half the population I've been working through my address book, typing in postcodes and seeing for myself where others live. The novelty wears off in about a minute, but I got to see that one journalist of my acquaintance lives in an impossibly grand house but I didn't care for the look of one former editor's address. My own mansion-block flat did not feature in Street View; it's on the top floor. the rest image