There really is no privacy anymore. Forget everything about the NSA. Just hanging out in your back yard is a public event.

Notice how people put their houses so that the public area is in front and the private area is in back. Nobody puts a deck or a pool in front of their house, facing the road. That is unthinkable. It violates unspoken rules.

The front yard is what you show to the world. The back yard is where you live.

People driving by can’t see your back yard. All the good stuff is back there. They only get to see it if you invite them to your house.

It is part of the reason people don’t put their bedrooms in the front room. When you open the front door to a person’s home, there will most likely be some chairs and a couch. The dining room will be next, and then the bedroom will be last. The house progresses in levels of privacy. The outside of the house is the same. What you see first is public. What you see last is private.

Except none of that means anything anymore. Pull up any internet mapping service and you can see anybody’s back yard, sometimes from multiple views. Sure, it isn’t live. Some of the photos are from a couple of years ago. But there is still an invasion of privacy.

Having mapping services does make life easier, certainly. It is really helpful when I’m travelling somewhere to be able to see what the place looks like from the street and from the air. It eases my fear about travelling to a new place to know not only how to get there but also what to expect when I get there.

But the more I think about it, the less I like the idea that everybody can see everything. Mapping was great when it helped me. Mapping is weird when it involves my home. It is kind of like how I felt when I was in elementary school and I found a book of ethnic jokes. Boy, were they funny, until I got to the section on Irish jokes. Then it wasn’t so funny because I’m of Irish descent. The shoe was on the other foot, if you will.

What can we do? Not much. Be mindful, sure. That is what we are all learning from all of this recent news about personal information being made public, or at least not as private as we thought. Everything we do can and will be recorded in one way or another. Our lives are being lived in public, whether we want it or not.

I don’t think it is something to freak out about. After all, the very organizations we would appeal to for help are the very ones that are creating the issue.