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Google's Street View Considered Offensive by Privacy International

The company's idea of expanding its application to Europe is being debated

7th of July 2008, 12:07 GMT

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Google Maps Street View is the subject of quite a few vivid debates in the circles of human rights associations. The company has already launched the application that offers street-level images in France, for those who want another perspective on the Tour de France. Google is now planning to extend the experiment to more European countries, but control groups are not pleased by the idea. Privacy International, a British organization that keeps an eye out on the deviances from human rights, is concerned about

the fact that people's identities won't be protected once this expansion takes place.

"In our view they need a person's consent if they make use of a person's face for commercial ends," stated Simon Davies, of Privacy International for BBC, referring to Google's application. He also voiced his concerns about the possible failure of face blurring, a technology that Google claims to be using in order to respect people's privacy.

Street View, that is now available in 44 regions of the U.S., is backed up by Google's senior privacy counsel Jane Horvath, who told the same media outlet: "We actually launched this technology publicly in early May, when we refreshed our imagery in Manhattan, New York. Since then we have applied face blurring to all new imagery launches in the US, including a major launch in June."

This is not Privacy International's first attempt at drawing attention to Google's out of place attitude regarding the issue of privacy. In a study conducted in 2007, the organization's researchers tagged Google with the black label of "privacy hostility." Out of 23 companies, Google was placed on the last position in a chart that tried to determine how intensive the consumers' surveillance was, as well as how effective the privacy policies.

"While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy," the author of the study noted caustically. One of Google's weak spots was considered, even back then, the usage of possibly harmful technologies "without adequate public consultation," as the report specified.

TAGS:

Google | Street View | privacy

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