The European Data Protection Supervisor warned that the StreetView feature of the Google Maps service could breach the EU data protection laws, if they show the pictures taken from the European cities.
The StreetView service makes it possible for users of GoogleMaps to see
several photos that show a 360-degree look on how the city streets or
crossings are seen at a street level. But they also get in these
pictures the pedestrians that are passing by or anyone in the area. The
service is available right now only for some US cities, but Google has
started the activities in order to get pictures from some European
cities. Their fleet of vans with cameras has been spotted in London,
Rome or Paris.
The European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, declared during
the press presentation of his annual data protection report:
"I would encourage Google to think about how to do this. Making
pictures on the street is in many cases not a problem, but making
pictures everywhere is certainly going to create some problems. I'm
quite sure they are aware of this."
Google didn't announced when the StreetView feature will be available
for the European cities, but the service is expected to be launched
next year.
Hustinx warned the company that "Complying with European data
protection law is going to be part of their business success or
failure. If they would ignore it, it is likely to lead to (court)
cases, and I think they would be hit hard."
But Google was already taking into consideration the privacy concerns
and announced that they developed a new face-blurring technology that
would be perfected in the future. In a blog post on Google Earth and
Maps teams, they presented the new change:
"We're also taking this opportunity to test our new face-blurring
technology on the busy streets of Manhattan. This effort has been a
year in the making — working at Street View-scale is a tough challenge
that required us to advance state-of-the-art automatic face detection,
and we continue working hard to improve it as we roll it out for our
existing and future imagery."
Google also announced that they would delete the images from StreetView
if someone complained and they think that these two actions should
respond to some of the privacy problems already highlighted.
Street View revisits Manhattan (12.05.2008)
Google blurs the privacy issue (13.05.2008)
Google map service could face EU lawsuits (16.05.2008)
Source: EDRi-gram ""Google StreetView might breach EU laws" Number 6.10, 21 May 2008
