England community stops Google photo program in its tracks and ignites privacy concerns across Europe
HENRY CHU
Sun
BROUGHTON, England — The good folk of Broughton don’t take kindly to being photographed without permission. Just ask Google.
When the search-engine giant sent one of its special vehicles to take pictures of the village for its Street View program, residents swung into action. They stopped the car in its tracks, called the police and quizzed the bewildered driver for nearly two hours before finally letting him go.
“I don’t think this guy anticipated how angry people would get,” said Edward Butler-Ellis, 28. “We didn’t stand there with pitchforks or anything and block the road with bales of hay, but obviously people were agitated. … A car with a pole with a camera on top of it causes suspicions.”
Those suspicions are being raised across Europe as Google proceeds with its project to document the Earth at ground level. Through Street View, the company offers 360-degree images of roads, landscapes and buildings (including, probably, your own home) to go along with its popular map function.
Privacy concerns, however, have delayed or disrupted the program’s launch in countries in Europe, where, in general, stricter laws on privacy and online data apply than in the U.S.
In May, Greece’s privacy watchdog ordered Google to stop collecting images until it satisfied questions on how long the information would be stored. German regulators have demanded stronger measures to guard against any infringement of privacy.
Last month, Switzerland became the latest to put a check on Street View. A few days after its launch, Swiss authorities told Google to take the program down until conditions could be met, including better blurring of the faces of bystanders.
The issues in Switzerland echo those elsewhere: People’s fears of being photographed in embarrassing or ambiguous circumstances, of having private spaces spied on and of not knowing how the published images might be used by strangers.
“We received many complaints,” Hanspeter Thuer, the Swiss federal data-protection commissioner, said. “In some cases, individuals complained the cameras saw into their gardens. Others complained that they had to justify themselves because the photographs on Google Street View were seen by the public.”
In one image, a Swiss politician was photographed with a blonde who was not his wife, which forced him to explain the woman is his secretary. In another case, a photo was reprinted in a newspaper, and “as a result, a restaurant owner had to explain how he was photographed in a known drug-dealing area,” Thuer said.
“Imagine that someone is photographed as they just happen to walk past a sex shop, or if someone enters a hospital,” he said.
Google says Street View breaches no laws and the company works hard with data-protection regulators to make sure the program enjoys official sanction wherever it operates. Since its unveiling in 2007, Street View has expanded to cities, towns and villages around the world.
Privacy concerns have dogged the program from the start. In Japan, the company agreed to re-shoot its photos after numerous complaints that the original ones peeked into people’s yards.
Kay Oberbeck, chief spokesman for the company’s operations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, said Street View’s suspension in Switzerland came as a surprise following a “really long history of discussions” between Google and Thuer’s office.
The company has promised to improve the technology that automatically scrambles people’s faces and car licence plates.
“The blurring technology is very, very effective and catches most faces and licence plates in the millions of pictures we take,” Oberbeck said. “We give everybody the opportunity to inform us of any problematic image they might see, and usually it is taken down within hours.”
Google will also publish more detailed schedules and itineraries of its Street View cars, Oberbeck said.
When the Google car trundled down Butler-Ellis’ street in April, he and other residents of Broughton, a snug village north of London, were already jittery from a rash of burglaries.
