That's right; Big Brother could already be watching (although its very unlikely). Live3D have launched an application that works in with Google Earth (GE) to 'wrap' web cam textures onto buildings within GE.
This means you can view buildings in GE as they look right at that moment. For example, you might watch a student walk across the face of a building on the Washington University campus, St Louis (The campus where Live3D was developed).
I'll let Live3D's video explain the application:
Scared? Me too.
The privacy issues associated with such applications have often been debated. Google's Street View raised many of these, but what we have here is a whole new ballgame. Whats the next step? Live satellite imagery in Google Earth? Surely that is an invasion of privacy? In the United States, the general rule (with some exceptions) is that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, thus implying that Google (and anyone else) is usually free to take photographs in public places.
Which almost sounds like a license for Google to show what they want.
Live3D was brought to my attention via the Digital Urban Blog which shows this scene as an example of the application in action. There are at least five building faces shown in the scene that are updating live.
I had a go at creating my own scene with a local surf report camera so that the current surf conditions could be displayed on my local beach but I must be missing a vital step as I can't seem to make it work. You can have a look at the scene here. Email me if you get it to work.
Personally I think this is a very interesting application, despite its potentially invasive attributes. We must remember, however, that this application is only utilizing web cams that are already available to anyone on the net, all it is doing is interfacing them with Google Earth. It does show what might be possible though.....
As far as I can tell this is just the tip of the iceberg, and the potential for such "live" real world applications, five years from now, is staggering.