It's been live for less than a week, but Google's Street View has already got the press and privacy outfits in a bit of a tizz over the possible implications of having the UK's highways and byways, and indeed the citizens unfortunate enough to have been walking Blighty's leafy boulevards when the Orwellian Opel came a-calling, plastered across cyberspace.
Amid all the hand-wringing, however, there are some resolute souls who care not one jot if they're nailed by the search monolith's roving spymobiles: The El Reg counter-surveillance surveillance operatives, who submitted snaps to our now-legendary snoopcar sighting mashup. See real-time interactive map here. (Opens in new window.)
Well, following the first spot of what we have dubbed a "surveillance feedback loop", we received further examples of the watchers being watched by the watchers who in turn find themselves being watched on Street View.
Our initial plan was to pin these incidents to a new Web 0.2 mashup, but no sooner had we connected the first test shot back on itself using a Street View link to create a self-referring closed reciprocal photographic image bounce, than someone from the Vulture Central particle physics lab ran screaming to the server room and hit the very big red button which closes down all third-party apps.
The reason, we gather, is that by plugging a surveillance feedback loop into the internet, it's possible for the logic resonance to grow at an exponential rate to such a degree that it becomes self-aware within twenty minutes and rips apart the very fabric of time and space in a desperate attempt to escape into a dimension where Google doesn't own absolutely everything.
Accordingly, we've restricted our examples to simple .jpgs. Enjoy.
© unknownFirst up, here's Ray, who moved with panther-like agility to nail this black ops vehicle in Bristol
© unknownHere's our man in Coventry, caught in the open but returning fire like a good 'un.
© unknownWe like this one, especially the strange effect provoked by flicking your eyes to and fro between the two takes of the bloke carrying the holdall. Good work by Stephen Hunt in London
© unknownOur Nottingham operative is notable for two things: His sheer bravado with the camera and the fact that he's the only one of you scruffy lot we've seen wearing a suit
© unknownSnoopmobile captures fellow operative on the sun-dappled streets of London...
...and may well have captured itself shortly thereafter. If you look closely, you might just be able to see a small interdimensional rift opening around the car's all-seeing eye as photons are accelerated to beyond light speed in the infinite loop formed between the lens, the reflection and Google's Street View servers. Scary stuff.
... once Google Street View is finished world wide, any military in the world is going to have a way easier time.
Imagine if the US had had Google Maps for Iraq!
Well, gotta give 'em some credit for not making he same mistake at home.
WAIT - Susan Boyle is on TV, I gotta run from that thought!
Buuurp.