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.