Very low-altitude Terraserver

Those who've seen the thoughtful (if slow) film 'Smoke' may recall cigarshop owner Harvey Keitel's hobby: at 8 (or is it 9?) each morning, he snaps a tripod-steadied picture of his humble streetcorner. In a poignant moment, William Hurt's character leafs through one of Keitel's calendar-galleries only to stop cold over a shot of his long-dead wife hurrying, unaware, to work.

Which raises an old question: how many tourist snapshots, the world over, does each of us appear in? Hard to reckon this directly, but why not take a page from the 'Terraserver' and other such publicly searchable satellite image archives?

Here's the plan (at least while film remains popular): equip each 35mm consumer camera to record latitude-longitude and time data on each frame (perhaps shot direction could be recorded too...). Have print labs jointly archive scans of film they process (privacy, shmivacy! this is Total Snapshot Awareness, people) into a database searchable by latitude/longitude, time of shot, and location of lab. Or, if archiving is to be elective, -discount the processing- with funds from advertising on the archive.

Now, to find incidental tourist pics of yourself/loved ones/your car/your bed &c., search the archive by shot location and date range, while maximizing distance of processing lab from said location. Or just explore the world randomly -- at street level. It's earth's family album.