Smile, You're on Google Cameras

Those of us in Southern California might find our pictures on Google Maps:

Google Inc. has been watching you, Southern California.

A caravan of cars and trucks mounted with cameras has been driving city streets for months, snapping close-up photographs of homes, shops and public places.

Any people who got in the way became subjects in Google's version of "Candid Camera."

The Internet company late Monday began incorporating street-level photos from Los Angeles, San Diego and some Orange County cities into its Google Maps program. The additions expanded an online service that thrilled some digital-map buffs and freaked out privacy advocates when it launched in May in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and three other cities.

The photos can help people scout out places they plan to visit. But when Google's camera shutters click, they capture more than buildings.

Within hours of the first release, bloggers had found and posted photographs — which are often sharp enough to identify the people in them — of vulnerable moments: students sunbathing in bikinis at Stanford University, motorists being ticketed by police, a man walking into an adult bookstore in Oakland, even a man picking his nose on a San Jose park bench.

In Los Angeles, it could create a new sport: celebrity hunting on Google Maps.

If anyone spots me in the shots, let me know. I'm ready for my closeup.