Google’s Street View Hits Legal Barriers

Google’s new service, Street View, which is said to facilitate people in their virtual touring of UK, faces a legal challenge from privacy advocates.

The service said to have started this week, and it includes, capturing photographs of the locations, including photos of the people present there.

Privacy International, a UK based rights group, has raised questions on this service, and has enunciated that the service breaches the privacy of citizens.

Responding to the new move, Simon Davis, from Privacy International, said “In our view they need a person’s consent if they make use of a person’s face for commercial ends.”  

Street View has already been introduced in US, and the streets of several cities including- New York, Las Vegas, Denver, and Miami- have been mapped; however, some people in the US have already complained about the use of their images.

To address the privacy issue, the company stated that it has started trial of face blurring technology, using a method which spots human faces in photograph.

Simon Davis has also uttered that Privacy International has doubts over Google’s promise of securing people’s privacy and maintained that none of the company’s past assurances have materialized yet.