Google's creepy "Street View" map captures privacy advocate

Kevin Poulsen has the story on Wired's "Threat Level" blog.

It's official. Every new street level map view service has to capture an image of EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston sneaking a cigarette.

Amazon's now-defunct A9 service first nailed Bankston outside EFF's San Francisco office a few years ago. He'd been trying conceal his smoking from his family.

These days Bankston uses that anecdote as a weapon in his principled but quixotic campaign against Google's new Street View service. Bankston argues Street View is legal, but irresponsible, and should include facial obfuscation technology so every face is blurred or made to resemble the mush-visaged demons from Jacobs Ladder.

But after the A9 incident, Bankston thought he'd personally escaped the same treatment from Street View, which shows nobody at all standing outside EFF headquarters.  Imagine my delight when, looking for directions in the Mission this weekend,  I stumbled upon this picture of someone resembling Bankston a few blocks away from EFF.