Google’s Eye in the Sky

With the release of the new satellite of Google, will it soon have the ability to spy on people? But how is it going to work when Google can’t even update its map? If you take a quick look at the maps, you typically won’t be able to see live changes. Also, you may experience a great difference between the satellite image you see on your screen and the the way a location looks in real life. However this is changing now for ever. Google steps ahead and decides to send a satellite of his own instead of using the NASA made devices. The plan is to launch a constellation of 24 satellites by 2018.

Of course with every little development in the world of technology brings another question about its ethical side(which happens to mostly be about privacy). Lets first define privacy. Privacy, by definition, is the ability of individuals and groups to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about themselves is shared with others. This has always been a crucial issue since the very first existence of technological devices. So for the U.S. government, people to have a private life safely was important for their freedom.

However in 2014 the restrictions about allowing for commercially available satellite imagery up to 25 cm resolution — twice as detailed as the previous limit of 50 cm — have been relaxed. Shortly after the U.S. government relaxed its satellite imagery restrictions in June, Google hired its own private satellite company. Skybox Imaging.

According to the founder of Skybox, Dan Berkenstock, for the first time this technology will allow not only ships or cars to be found but also allow people to be found too. This new development will, of course, help finding places easier but will it be only used for locating places.

Google Company claims that the satellite will be used for the greater good. It is obvious that this new technology will be very useful but at the same time it raises a lot of questions and fires a lot of arguments towards privacy. Eventually companies will want to use this brilliant idea to locate potential customers. And once they gain access to so many secrets about people, what will they use it for?

Is this device going to be used only when you want to check if you forgot to turn the lights off in your house? Or is it going to be used at face recognition from outer space? Is it not counted as benefitting from the vulnerability of the humankind? Humans are designed to learn from their mistakes and if technology won’t allow this learning process to happen, will humans get dumber and dumber? Will this violate all the rules and laws against privacy?

As Alan Parsons Project denoted in their song called ‘Eye In The Sky’, will Google’s eyes be able to make new rules, invade our privacy, and even read our minds?

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And stay golden…