Google Street View – Banned in Greece, cut down to size in Japan
By Dave Parrack
Google Street View must be one of the most unpopular Web applications of all time. “No,” I hear you cry, “some of us love it.” That may well be the case, but privacy campaigners have fought the service almost everywhere it has launched. It’s now been banned in Greece, and is facing problems in Japan.
I’ve never seen anything like the amount of trouble caused by Google Street View before. Here is a great service designed to educate and entertain people, yet many want to see it stopped, shut down, and banned. Why? Because it can apparently encroach on people’s privacy.
Google Street View has been rolled out in the U.S. and in various countries in Europe over the past couple of years. Everywhere it’s been launched, it has come in for criticism, most of which has been covered extensively here on Blorge.
The latest two countries to express their displeasure at the service are Greece and Japan.
Google was in the process of photographing the streets of cities in Greece, something that happens months before the service is actually launched properly and all those images are made available to view on the Web. However, according to Breitbart, due to intervention by the Greek Data Protection Authority, photography will be stopped until the search giant provides additional information pertaining to Google Street View.
This includes how long Google intends to keep the images for and how it intends to inform the Greek people as to their privacy rights and how these are affected by the service. As usual, Google has promised to blank out people’s faces and license plates in order to abide by the law but despite this, Greece has effectively banned the service until further notice.
According to BBC News, there are also problems coming to light in Japan. The photographing stage has already taken place in Japan and the views of 12 major cities in the country went live on the Web recently. Unfortunately for Google, these images prompted scores of complaints from people who felt the photographs impinged on their privacy.
The main issue in Japan is that houses are close to the roads and fences and walls surrounding properties tend to be shorter than in other countries. This means the high-mounted cameras on top of the cars taking the pictures have inadvertently taken images of people’s gardens and through windows. Google is now going to lower the cameras by 40cm and reshoot the photographs.
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May 15th, 2009
My favorite relates to the “Boring” couple, who let’s face it, we’re pretty boring.
May 15th, 2009
I study in Greece, and this is all BS coming from them, since there is already another company trying to deliver a similar service as Google Street, and i think its already live for anyone to use it. They are just nuts