Google Street View confused for surveillance operation in Rome

The zeitgeist of Rome, Italy made itself plain last week:

For many Romans, these are jittery times. For the first time in a generation, the mayor of the Eternal City, once a left-wing stronghold, is on the political right. Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-Fascist, swept to power late last month on a tough-on-crime platform that included bulldozing encampments of Roma [gypsy] people, expelling supposedly violent foreigners and installing London-like surveillance cameras around town.

So a group of Romans can be forgiven on Wednesday afternoon for assuming the worst when a black car sporting a massive, rotating video camera, slowly drove down Viale Trastevere, a busy thoroughfare, filming everybody in sight. On cue, pedestrians shuffled off the street and into bars, out of sight of the offending vehicle, no doubt wondering if these are the new intrusions that must be endured after a sudden shift to the right.

Of course it was nothing more than the Google Street View car. Nevertheless, with such Mussolini-like rhetoric coming from its new mayor, it is heartening to see that Romans are wary of the creep of a surveillance state there. I fear that’s not all they have coming with Alemanno in office.