Get Orf My Land, Google

Paul Jacobs was minding his own business yesterday, presumably wondering how to stop the riff-raff from burgling homes in Broughton, England, his tony village northwest of London, when a small black Opal Astra cruised past his home with a 360-degree camera mounted on a tripod on the roof, shutters clicking away. Suddenly, he realized the awful truth. Google Street View had come to his home town.

Instantly, Jacobs went to work. Dashing outside his home, he stopped the car in mid-click and warned him not to violate his townlet's sacred privacy. "I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime," he told the Daily Mail. "This is an affluent area. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for burglars to strike." Before the Googler could continue his sinister shutterbugging, Jacobs was off like a shot, banging on doors and calling out his neighbors. The rest of the world, he warned, had arrived.

Since Google Street View arrived in Great Britain a few weeks ago, the queen's subjects have been decidedly less interested in having their homes and faces plastered on the Web than the former colonies have. After Google inadvertently posted photographs of a man leaving a sex shop, another man decorating the pavement outside a local pub, and a third man's car parked outside the home of a female friend when he was supposedly traveling on business, angry citizens flooded Google with complaints. In fact, a privacy advocacy group has gone so far as to demand that the government shut down Google Street View altogether until the company can guarantee the privacy of ordinary folks who may be caught in the cameras' crosshairs. One of their more specious arguments has been that Google Street View will make it easier for burglars to scope out homes and look for security flaws. But try telling that to the good folks of Broughton.

Within minutes, reports the Daily Mail, an extremely polite mob formed in front of the Googlemobile, formed a human chain, and refused to let the car into their town. The cops arrived, and the spooked Googler turned around and returned to headquarters. The villagers had won.

Google did its best to put a spin on the affair. "Householders are entitled to request their property is removed from the site but only after the picture has appeared," a spokesman told the Daily Mail. "Street View is incredibly popular and now spans nine countries. It is just a further evolution of maps and a valuable aid to people moving house or wanting an insight into a particular area."

This is hardly the most opportune moment for an agent of the modern world to flash its wares in Britain; witness the eco-riots taking place outside the G20 meetings in London this week. Still, not everyone was entirely sympathetic toward Broughton's burghers. TechRadar's Adam Hartley called the crowd "a gang of angry Luddites."