A small black Opel car with a high roof-mounted camera and a
Google logo was spotted by one Flickr
user and by
Channel 4 News, indicating that Google is gathering data for a
London Steet View service.
Google confirmed today that it is gathering data in Europe and
"London may be one of the cities included when we launch Street
View in Europe". Internet message board posts have said that the
cars have also been spotted in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Birmingham,
Leeds and Middlesbrough.
"Our users have been asking for the service ever since we
launched in the US and we are very excited about bringing it to
Europe," a Google spokeswoman told OUT-LAW.COM. "Soon people from
all over the world will be able to explore the beautiful cities of
Europe right from their desks."
Street View takes 360 degree photographs of city streetscapes
and integrates them with the company's mapping tool to allow people
to see addresses or streets and also to travel through streets
online, one photo at a time.
The service has proved controversial with privacy activists who
worry that people's identities and locations are being published
online without their permission.
A couple in the US has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming
that Street View's pictures of their house were intrusive and that
the car must have trespassed on private land to take the
pictures.
Google has said, though, that it will adapt its processes for
particular legal environments, and that it is aware that Europe has
stronger privacy laws and more stringent expectations than the
US.
"We've always said that Street View will respect local laws
wherever it is available and we recognize that other countries
strike a different balance between the concept of 'public spaces'
and individuals' right to privacy in those public spaces," said
Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer in a blog post last
year. "There's an important public policy debate in every country
around what privacy means in public spaces. That balance will vary
from country to country, and Street View will respect it."
Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons and
editor of OUT-LAW.COM, said that the site would only cause problems
under certain circumstances.
"There is only a privacy issue if people or the number plates of
their vehicles can be identified from the photographs. Even then,
because the cameras are not targeting anyone in particular, it
would be difficult to argue that what Google is doing is breaching
anyone's right of privacy," he said.
A recent ruling by the Court of Appeal in a case involving
children's author JK Rowling could help Google's case. Rowling was
protesting on behalf of her then-infant son about photographs taken
of him on the street in 2004.
That Court upheld Rowling's case, but said that the child's
privacy was invaded because he was the target of the photograph.
Sir Anthony Clarke, in the ruling, said that the same protection
was not to be extended to people who just happened to be in a
photographed street.
"If the photographs had been taken, as Lord Hope put it [in
another case], to show the scene in a street by a passer-by and
later published as street scenes, that would be one thing, but they
were not taken as street scenes but were taken deliberately, in
secret and with a view to their subsequent publication," he said in
his ruling.
Fleischer has said in the past that Google would be prepared to
use face blurring technology or to lower the resolution of the
images in Europe to alleviate privacy fears. Google also has a
policy of removing photographs on request from individuals
pictured.
"Google has to be sensitive to places where people have an
expectation of privacy. Google knows that it mustn't go snapping
people in their back gardens, for example," said Robertson. "While
there will always be some people who object to the photos being
taken in the first place, I really don't think it's something that
laws can stop."
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