Into their lives it will creep. It starts when they’re always afraid. You step out of line and they come to take you away…

Like many Native American tribes who used to believe that you can steal someone’s soul by taking their photograph, Germans still do. Or at least they seem to when it comes to Google’s nifty spiffy high-speed Street View panoramic photo mapping service.

A German „data protection regulator“ (that’s kind of like a medicine man over here) has warned Google that he will be forced by forces beyond his control to pursue unspecified sanctions if they don’t send him written guarantees (in Wolf’s blood) that they will stop taking pictures of everybody’s souls already.

German privacy law forbids the dissemination of photos of people or their property without their consent. It probably also forbids disseminating descriptions of them, too, or mentioning their name out loud or talking about them when they are not there or even to them when they are (not that you would want to, this is all hypothetical) because they might think that you want something from them or that you’re out to get them or something and then that vicious spiral of distrust, fear, loathing and paranoia starts spinning all over and over again and again. And we don’t want that.

Anyway, it’s funny how Germans still believe in the soul at all, I find. There’s no God over here, I’m told, but souls are still in? Whatever. Say Käse (cheese). Ha, ha, just joking.

„Sie fürchten Eingriffe in die Privatsphäre, außerdem könnten Diebe auf diese Weise Wohnungen ausspähen.“