Companies with an interest in bringing the sights of faraway places to the web browser may deliver more than expected. For the people who showed up in MapJack photos snapped in Thailand, those sights may look far too clear for comfort.

The Sydney Morning Herald gleefully recounted MapJack’s recent trip to Pattaya, a resort town in Thailand with a reputation for sex tourists. Some people who may or may not have wanted to be a permanent part of the scenery ended up there after MapJack’s cameras passed through the place in the past few months.

A MapJack representative said in the report the company would blur faces or license plates on request. Not many people make those requests, apparently, but who would think to go back and look at an online mapping site repeatedly on the off chance they were caught on camera?

It’s not just trips to destinations of questionable morality that should concern people who may be the subject of the unblinking eye of a tech firm’s photography efforts. What if someone with a grudge happens to browse the whereabouts of a former spouse looking for leads, and odds against odds spots the person?

We’ve been enthused about the utility of imagery on the Internet, to give people a reasonably detailed peek at where they live, or even where they want to go. But we’re hard-pressed to come up with an argument favoring the continued placement of unknowing people, in unblurred pictures, online routinely.

“MapJack is still in beta form,” points out Nick Mokey for Digital Trends, “but in the future it could represent a challenge to Google if it manages to expand to other cities and further refine its interface.”  Unfortunately, it remains unclear if MapJack will do either of these things.

In the meantime, MapJack puts on an impressive show within San Francisco.  Picture quality is relatively high, and thanks to a representative figure named Jack (who can be viewed against both map and satellite overhead views), it’s easy to see where “you” are in relation to other streets and buildings.

The one area in which MapJack falls behind Google (besides its area of coverage) is, as Mokey notes, the way in which pictures are presented – when moving Jack, he jumps from point to point, and so pictures are not sent in a smooth scroll.  (Also, the higher picture quality eliminated all the freaky effects found in Google’s Street View, and I kind of miss them.)

All in all, MapJack is quite nice – in San Francisco.  And if that’s all the company’s leaders are hoping to achieve, they’re in fantastic shape.  Yet for most of us (and Google) to really take note, we’re going to need a few more cities to get involved in this venture.