In the wake of a stunning data breach the University of Victoria campus community could only hope that the institution would do everything it could to regain lost trust. One such opportunity arose this week, when controversial Google Streetview vehicles have been scheduled to canvas the campus. Unfortunately the opportunity was squandered: it is largely by accident that the campus community has – or will – learn that Google is capturing images and wireless access point information.

In this short post I want to discuss how seriously the University failed to disclose Google’s surveillance of the campus. I begin by providing a quick overview of Streetview’s privacy controversies. I then describe the serious data breach that UVic suffered earlier this year, which has left the institution with a significant trust deficit. A discussion of the institution’s failure to disclose Google’s presence to the community, and attempts to chill speech around Google’s presence, follows. I conclude by suggesting how institutions can learn from UVic’s failures and disclose the presence of controversial, potentially privacy invasive, actors in order to rebuild flagging trust deficits.

Google Streetview and Privacy

Streetview has been a controversial product since its inception. There were serious concerns as it captured images of people in sensitive places or engaged in indiscreet actions. Initially the company had a non-trivial means for individuals to remove images from the Google Streetview database. This process has subsequently been replaced with an option to blur sensitive information. Various jurisdictions have challenged Google’s conceptual and legal argument that taking images of public spaces with a Streetview vehicle are equivalent to a tourist taking pictures in a public space.

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