Privacy complaint over Street View

24 March 2009 08:57am

Privacy campaigners have made a formal complaint about Google's controversial new mapping service.

Privacy International has lodged the complaint with the Information Commissioner over claims that a number of people are identifiable through the Street View service.

The application allows users to access 360-degree views of roads and homes in 25 British towns and cities and includes photographs of millions of residential addresses, people and cars.

Sophisticated technology has been developed automatically to obscure the faces of people featured in Street View photographs, and car registration plates have been blurred, but this has failed to quieten critics, with many labelling the maps voyeuristic and intrusive.

But a Google spokeswoman insisted that the necessary safeguards to protect people's privacy - tools that allow users to remove images - "work effectively".

She said: "Before launching Street View we sought the guidance and approval of the independent and impartial Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO has repeatedly made clear that it believes that in Street View the necessary safeguards are in place to protect people's privacy.

"It has reiterated that today. The fact that some people have used the tools in place to remove images shows that the tools work effectively.

"Overall, the product has proven to be very popular already, not just in the UK but also in other countries where it has been launched. Of course, if anyone has concerns about the product or its images they can contact us and we look forward to hearing from them."

Scores of pictures, including one of a man exiting a Soho sex shop and another of a man being sick on the pavement outside a pub in Shoreditch, were removed from Street View on Friday, a day after its fanfare launch in the UK.

But the service has proved a hit with intrigued British internet users. Google Maps UK received one in every 250 UK internet visits on Friday, with onsite traffic rising by 41%, web monitoring firm Hitwise claimed.

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