Pittsburgh makes Fark (again) - Children's safety group wants city removed from Google Streetview

With an appropriate "stupid" tag, an article regarding Pittsburgh has been Farked. And yes, I do believe that Pittsburgh appears on Fark just a little too much for comfort. It is not a badge of honour for a geographical entity to have its own tag (here's looking at you, Florida).

From the Post-Gazette:

A national children's advocacy group is pushing to get Pittsburgh removed from the Street View of Google's map search until the technology is refined so pedophiles can't use it to pinpoint children's homes, schools and playgrounds.

Street View, an addition to Google Maps that uses vehicle cameras to take 360-degree, street-level views of neighborhoods, allows users to virtually cruise down a street and across a city. In the process, the tool shows pictures of children, toys and family cars that could tip a would-be predator to an area where children could be found and potentially victimized, according to the group, Stop Internet Predators.

Street View is available in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area and 17 other cities in the U.S.

Google has said it would consider requests to remove such images from Street View but has not yet done so, according to Stacie Rumenap, executive director of Stop Internet Predators. Until the tool can be used without potentially endangering children, it should not be allowed, she said.

While we're at it, let's remove listings of daycare centres and schools from phonebooks as well, since those enable paedophiles to pinpoint where children are. Also, let's take down all the street signs pointing out the locations of schools and not allow daycare centres to use the word "daycare" in the signs denoting their businesses. I suspect that the people working for this child protection group were collectively dropped on their heads as babies.