North Oaks tells Google Maps: Keep out – we mean it

Well, it had to happen sometime, but this seems to be a first. The town of North Oaks, MN, has completely excised itself from Google’s commercial panopticon, at least at the street level. I’ve argued before that Street View can and should remove people, cars, and other transient objects, not only to protect privacy, but to permit more sophisticated use of the data beyond the basic "snapshot in time."

But North Oaks didn’t stop at cars and people. They didn’t even want their streets in Street View.

Like Barbara Streisand, they apparently don’t want their digs visible to outsiders. Someone might use that information to gawk at their greatness, which would be embarrassing, if not outright dangerous, when outsiders so covet what these fine folks have worked so hard to establish and keep away from them…

But unlike Streisand, North Oaks can actually do something about it — their roads are considered "privately owned" and their posted "No Trespassing" signs prohibit people from driving through (no gate, mind you) to take photographs.

The town, of course, can’t do anything about the aerial and satellite views. They haven’t privatized the airspace above the town, at least not yet.

But my questions is this: lots of towns and cities are incorporated, and that corporation technically owns the roads. What’s to stop any "public" entity from ruling that their streets are "private" and therefore off-limits, at least to non-tax-payers?

Some towns and cities have already tried to ban public photography (for security and/or copyright reasons, the latter of which invariably translates to the profit motive). Why wouldn’t all of the most elite and effete communities wish to bolster their internal self-image by removing themselves from public view, like Brigadoon, but under their own ultimate control?

Non-existence, oddly enough, is the ultimate status symbol.

Of course, someone might do well to inform this town that, like those mysterious and blatant zones of pixelation in Google Earth and Maps we keep talking about, it’s the missing information that draws the most scrutiny.

What are they hiding, we wonder? Why are so many stories being written about the mysteries of North Oaks — the town that wasn’t there?

Much better to hide out in plain sight, I believe. Or, if you really want to keep people out, then put up a friggin gate, and a guard, and pay the actual market price for your insulation from the rest of society.