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Google Maps’ Street View has drawn some attention from the
European Union, which has shown concerns over privacy issues. EU says that
showing detailed images of the streets including the people that are walking
there could be against the law in some countries. While taking public photos
here and there is perfectly O.K., taking pictures of the entire city could be a
problem.
Google’s service is displaying ground level photos of the
streets online. While some people, like drivers or tourists love the service,
others have felt that their right to privacy has been violated. The idea of the
possibility of being seen by friends walking out of a sex shop or sunbathing is
one that doesn’t appeal to many people.
The service which seems to be taken from George Orwell’s
dystopia book ‘1984’ is at this time available only in the 40 cities of the
United States where no legal measures have been taken against it and is
considered to respect the laws. Google has complied with official requests that
pictures of military bases should not be put online.
The search engine giant has responded to the EU officials
that it will make everything that is possible in order to comply with local
laws. This might mean trying to automatically blur the faces of the people that
appear in the pictures. Although this is a satisfactory measure, it seems very
hard to put into practice, because face recognition is very difficult.
A lot of
nature elements or parts of buildings are making the program mistake them with
real people’s faces. Google has started implementing the system in New York with fairly
good results and has said that it would make it available to the other 39
cities as well.
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