Google Faces UK Street View Problems
July 07, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson
As Google starts taking pictures prior to a UK launch of its Street View mapping tool, a privacy group says it's breaking data protection laws and might refer the plan to the Information Commissioner.
Google’s Street View mapping tool, which matches photos of locations – including the people who are there are the time - to maps, is die to launch in the UK soon. But one group, Privacy International, feels it breaks UK data protection laws by showing the faces of individuals in the pictures, the BBC reports.
Street View is already in use in the US. Where people have complained about being included in a picture there, Google has removed them from the shot. Now the company is experimenting with an algorithm that recognizes and blurs faces, but Privacy International has doubts about the technology.
"We've spoken to Google in the past about this and received a snide response telling us to look more closely at their blogs,” Privacy International’s Simon Davies told the BBC.
"We've been told by engineers at Google that the technology is not ready to be deployed."
Under UK law if a person is shown in a photograph that’s used for commercial purposes, that individual needs to give permission.
Privacy International has given Google seven days to respond to a request for more information on its face-blurring technology. If it doesn’t receive a satisfactory answer, it’s threatening to go to the Information Commissioner to have the Street View service suspended in the UK.
Post Your Comment...Comments
Darren on Jul 8th, 2008 at 12:00 AM:
This is ridiculous. Google can't take pictures of streets just because someone doesn't want their picture to appear on the web, but these people don't care about the amount of times they get filmed everyday anyway. You get filmed all the time on CCTV, then there is also the chance of you getting caught in someones camera whilst they are taking a picture (which might later get uploaded to YouTube), or you might get caught in a TV camera a few times when they are filming. Do any of these people ask for your permission to film them, no, so why should Google need to ask everyones permission or are we going to get to a state where nobody can film anywhere for fear that someone in the background might not want their picture to appear on the video. We had a similar problem a few years ago at a scout camp where we couldn't take pictures of anyone with an X on their pass because their parents hadn't given permission, this meant that some of the kids couldn't be included in the souvenir dvds of the camp or camp newsletters, at one point I was taking a picture of a group of people at the camp that had made friends for the DVD and had to get one of them to stand outside the photo as she couldn't be on it due to this rule which they weren't too happy with. Anyway what personal information are Google giving out by showing someone's picture, there are loads of people who all look the same and Google aren't identifying that person and giving out their name and address.
Comment on this article
Please keep your comments relevant to this article. Email addresses are not displayed, they are only required to verify you are human.
When you submit your comment, an email will be sent to your email address with a confirmation link. Once you have clicked on that confirmation link your comment will be posted.
HTML is not allowed.
RSS Feed
mukka on Jul 7th, 2008 at 6:14 AM:
Tha's was some **** ever!