Google Street View could meet Privacy Road Block in UK

Davey Winder
Saturday, 05 July 2008 19:32

Your IT - Home IT

The IT legal experts over at Out-Law admit that rulings will vary from country to country but uses the United Kingdom as an example of where the law is clear cut. "in the UK we have a right to prevent the display of an image that would cause substantial distress" they say, continuing "all we have to do is send an email to Google asking that it does not display a picture of us."

If Google ignores your request the case can be taken to the Office of the Information Commissioner who can enforce your right to privacy and, according to Out-Law "If there's damage and distress, you can sue."

Which is ironic given that the UK has the highest ration of CCTV cameras per head of population anywhere on the planet. How many might that be? Well at the end of 2006 there were 4.2 million cameras or one for every 14 people in the country.

Privacy International has long been concerned about CCTV usage in the UK and is now considering the privacy threat that Google Street View vans might pose.

Google has always responded with the technological answer, that it has a face blurring algorithm that automatically detects human faces in Street View images and does what you might expect of a face blurring algorithm. Privacy International claims that when it has spoken to Google about this in the past it "received a snide response telling us to look more closely at their blogs."

Now Privacy International has written to Google requesting technical information and insists that if an answer is not forthcoming, within a week, it will be seeking a suspension of the Street View service by the Information Commissioner.