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Hard Times for Google Street View

SwitzerlandFinn de Thomas Wagner, International School of Berne
March 23, 2011

NEWS

Google Street View was sentenced to a record fine of 140,000 USD by French courts in March. The fine can be traced back to something for which one of Google’s newest technologies has already appeared often in the media: privacy concerns. However, this time it was not that unpixelated pictures of people or number plates were appearing for everyone to see, but that photographs of vehicles were taken and confidential information was stolen from users of public Wifi networks. While vehicles were collecting data in order to include more towns and cities in their databases, the system was also taking in and saving many email addresses and passwords. This occurred because the vehicles save public Wifi networks belonging to cafes and other businesses to include later in their products. France is not the only country affected. At least two others, Germany and Switzerland, claim to have similar cases.

In Switzerland, Street View will be facing the Federal Data Protection Office, represented by Hanspeter Thür in the Federal Administrative Court because of claims that not enough confidential items such as faces or number plates are pixelated in their photos, which are publicly available. According to Google’s data protection representative Peter Fleischer, 99% of confidential items are not visible, and this is enough. He also says that not everything can be perfect, but that Google is doing the best they can. Meanwhile, other countries such as Greece are stopping Google from taking additional pictures, and some countries such as Australia have already banned Streetview completely.

Google Street View has now started a different branch of this technology which includes taking images of ski slopes and then putting these on their program, similar to what was done with streets up to now. Images are currently being taken in various ski resorts in Sweden, the United States and Switzerland. The images will be put up in the near future. With these new images being made available, a new wave of protests and court cases is definitely on the horizon.

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