Res Communis

Google Street View Complaints

by P.J. Blount with the blog faculty

From GeoConnexion:

France and Switzerland contest Google Street View

26 August 2009, 10:07am

After being criticised and contested in several countries in Europe, such as UK, Germany and Greece and even outside Europe like in Japan, it is the turn of France and Switzerland to complain against Google’s service Street View.

Several complaints have been recorded in France in 2009 against Street View service as recently indicated by the French Data Protection Authority – CNIL (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés).

CNIL is keeping an eye of Google’s system as the company has introduced in France this summer tricycles equipped with cameras to explore parks, walking streets and other less crowded areas. Despite the system introduced by Google to blur faces and other identification elements such as licence plates from the images taken by Street View cameras, the system is not 100% proof. For instance, profiles or faces through grills can still be visible and are not blurred. Besides, people are also asking for other elements to be blurred such as the access to private homes.

The French authority is also concerned about the delay in the data treatment and the retention of raw images. In June, Google committed in front of European Commission’s Article 29 working party to improve this aspect and delete the raw images but not on a very short term and no precise period of time was given.

In Switzerland, less than one week after the launching of Street View, the authorities have already asked for the immediate interruption of the service under threat of taking the case to court as they consider that Google’s blurring technology is not good enough. . . . [Full Story]