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Swiss Government Sues Google Over Street View's Privacy Violation
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by amyellensoden | November 16, 2009 at 01:26 pm
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Switzerland is halting Google from proceding with their Street View service maps due to concerns about personal privacy and security of its people. The Swiss government demands higher privacy protection if the Street View maps are to go forward. Google Street View maps allow users to search for a location and view a panoramic image of that exact location.
Swiss data protection commissioner, Hanspeter Thuer, claims that Google had rejected his numerous recommendations before going forth with their service. A law suit against Google could be in the works that would take place at the Federal Administrative Tribunal.
Data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer wants Google to ensure that all faces and car plates are blurred and that enclosed areas such as walled gardens and private roads are removed.
He also wants the California firm to declare at least one week in advance which Swiss town and cities it plans to photograph and show online.
Google claims that they have taken substantial measures to protect individual's privacy. They feel that their blurring technology should be enough and pointed out that before the service went forward, they had given privacy regulators an opportunity to bring up questions and concerns.
If the case does in fact go to court, Google plans to defend their Street View service without wavering. This will be the first time that Google has faced a law suit from a government agency concerning Street View. Their activity in Switzerland has temporarily been halted meaning that they cannot take any new photos for their service, but the existing photos will remain available.
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at 14:25 on November 16th, 2009
The Swiss government has put it's position online at http://www.admin.ch/aktuell/00089/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=30087 - believe the main concern is actually described here;
"Even the advance information that Google gave to the FDPIC was incomplete: for example, Google announced that it would primarily be filming urban centres, but then put comprehensive images of numerous towns and cities on the Internet. In outlying districts, where there are far fewer people on the streets, the simple blurring of faces is no longer sufficient to conceal identities. This is primarily due to the website's zoom function, which enables the Street View user to isolate and enlarge images of individuals on the screen."
...in other words, given a village of, say, < 100 people, the blurring is ineffective because for people that live in the village, they'd be able to identify someone from their physique or clothing.
Meanwhile Google has it's response (and a history of communication) online at https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/streetviewch/business-uses ( translation via translate.google.com );
"We are very disappointed that the Federal Data Protection Commissioner announced that he wanted to go to court. We think this is unnecessary and believe that Street View is perfectly legal. We have met before and after launch with the Federal Data Protection and explains our technology . Where required, we have proposed measures to strengthen the technology to protect privacy and to dispel any doubts.
Street View is located in Switzerland from the outset proved to be very popular and with this decision affected only the Swiss population. "