Road rage

 
Published: Thursday 15 October 2009

-- When Paul Jacobs of a village in UK's Cambridgeshire county spotted a car marked Google car, he alerted other villagers. The people of Broughton quickly formed a human chain until the Google car slunk away with tailpipe between its tyres. The villagers complained Google had no right to take pictures of their homes, calling it an invasion of privacy and an invitation for burglars to strike.

But the village has raised the ire of enthusiasts of Google's Street View service. Some of them have demanded people from across the UK descend on Broughton to snap their own perfectly legal photographs. Members of social networking site Twitter are calling on Street View enthusiasts to sweep into action as a protest against the villagers. They have already begun posting pictures of the village online. Some have used the photographs to post tongue-in-cheek masterplans on how to plot robberies by climbing on red phoneboxes and swinging off tree branches.

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