[hackuser]

While it will have some great uses, it also brings more surveillance and predictive analytics (if that's the term) to the world, and chillingly they don't address the social issues at all.

Will Google use this, or allow others to use this, to surveil me from space? How about protesters at this summer's U.S. political conventions? Will they allow me to use this to watch Google's headquarters?

It also concentrates more power in the hands of a few. If the predictive tech works well, how can ordinary people who don't have access to that information compete? As investors in the stock market? Their small business in the marketplace? As a grassroots competitor in a political campaign?

[samstave]

IMO, there is nothing greater good vs mass surveillance that will come of this.

This is an NSA wet dream privatized and privately funded by Google.

Sounds great but we all know what's going to happen with this data.

[btian]

I'd like Google to track down highway patrol cops and integrate it with Waze / Maps.

[mmanfrin]

Such technology is already being used in this way, and has been compared chillingly to tracking 'precrime'; there is a terrifying Radiolab episode on it:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

[dcposch]

Thats about Gorgon Stare and similar plane / blimp / drone based survillance.

Satellites orbit at an altitude several 100 times higher and are much less invasive. There are a lot of cool applications, like cartography, monitoring farmland, monitoring the icecaps, etc.

I care deeply about civil liberties, but I think this is not the droid we're looking for.