Davey Winder
Saturday, 05 July 2008 18:32
Your IT -
Home IT
Page 1 of 2
The privacy related problems just pile up for Google as the first Street View vans are spotted in the United Kingdom and European Data Protection laws are rolled out to greet them...
It is just a bit of fun, this whole Google Street View thing, isn't it?
With
nose-pickers,
nudity and
offices shaped
liked bulldozers all
finding their fifteen minutes of online fame.
Not everybody is laughing though, especially not in
Europe where data protection laws could pile on the litigation woes for
Google. Forget about complying with takedown notices, they are not likely to impress
courts in Europe where in an invasion of privacy even in a public
place is now seen as a serious privacy breach.
The European Court of Justice has already ruled, way back in 2003 in
actual fact, that identifying people online and without implied
permission is a violation of the Data Protection Directive. There is an
exception for people taking pictures and publishing them for purely
personal and private reasons, and that includes total strangers, but
the European Court ruled these did not apply in this
landmark case.
Things get even tougher when sensitive data is involved, and if you
have looked at any of the Street View gallery sites you will know that
plenty of sensitive images are captured. In fact,
it has been suggested that in order to conform to the
additional European Data Protection Directive requirement for explicit
consent in such cases Google Street View camera vans "might need to
pull over and start picking up signatures."
What do the legal experts at Out-Law have to say about all this? Read the next page to find out...
CONTINUED