A Wellington Street view

I best know local uber-partisan Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre for an endless series of rabid political cheap shots that seem to me to be firmly rooted in a deeply considered intellectual process involving either cartoon logic or clinical insanity. Come to think of it, his parliamentary question period antics probably give rabies a bad name. He regards John Baird (or possibly Baird's hair) as his political mentor, for cripes' sakes...

So, earlier this week when PP, a member of the federal access to information, privacy and ethics committee, took a, ummm, principled stand against Google Street View in Ottawa, I immediately began looking for the guy's ummm, well-reasoned angle. There has to be one. There always is.

PP claimed that he had concerns about the service's potential for invading privacy. Since he backs a law 'n order agenda, which can occasionally involve stuff like, oh, ubiquitous closed circuit TV cameras aimed at the general populace for no particular reason, I hadda kinda wonder.

Now, suddenly he has flipflopped, (assuming foursquare, steadfastly antiflipflop Tories can ever be said to flipflop. I'm sure they call it something else among themselves. I digress.) musing that a "useful and popular service" like Street View could fall victim to Canada's privacy laws vis-a-vis public surveillance. Which, unlike earlier this week, are now apparently too strong. And so must be modified to make them weaker. To allow, ummm, useful and popular services. To whom, exactly, other as yet unspecified services might also be useful and popular with, remains an open question for now.

Oh. Now I get it... and I'm torn. And perhaps slightly more paranoid than usual. Tooling around virtual versions of the great cities of the world amuses me. Pretending Ottawa is a great city of the world would amuse me even more. I like Street View. But if a little git like PP supports it...