Google Street View has come under a lot of criticism since its launch in the UK earlier this year. One Village in the UK prevented Google from taking images of its streets in a protest against privacy. This resulted in complaints to the Information Commissioner about possible breaches of the Data Protection Act by Google.


The Residents of Broughton, near Milton Keynes, stopped the driver of the Google Street Maps car from entering the village. The Police were called to attend after residents reported Google was invading their privacy and “facilitating a Crime”, insisting that Google should have obtained permission before entering the village.


Privacy International put forward a formal complaint, along with 74 other individual, to the Information Commissioner requesting the service be suspended, pending an investigation due to the fact that some faces were clearly visible on the published images.


Google Street Views does use a face blurring technology but some individual faces are not obscured. Google has put in place a system that allows users to request the blurring of their face or of an image. Dozens of images have been removed from the UK version of Street View since the service went live.
The information Commissioner has ruled that Google is not in breach of the Data protection act and that Google is not invading the privacy of UK residents. In fact it’s clearly evident that Google is clearly removing images as quickly as possible.


“We recognise that a small minority of people may not wish their house to be included in the service which is why we have created easy to use removals tools,” said a spokesman from Google.
David Evans the Information Commissioner’s senior data protection practice manager compared being caught on an image in Google Street Views to being captured by a film or TV news camera.
“It would not be in the public interest to ‘turn the digital clock back’,” he said.


“In the same way, there is no law against anyone taking pictures of people in the street as long as the person using the camera is not harassing people,” he said.

“In a world where many people Tweet, Facebook and blog, it is important to take a commonsense approach towards Street View and the relatively limited privacy intrusion it may cause.”


The Information Commissioner will continue to monitor Street View as a way of regulating the service.


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