Mountain View, California — Internet behemoth Google Inc. has once again been chased by privacy advocates in Japan and Greece over its Google Maps feature, Street View. Google on Wednesday bowing to pressure from privacy groups, said it will it will “lower the cameras on its vehicles by 40 centimetres” after complaints in Japan that the cameras were capturing images over fences in private residences, and said it would reshoot all Japanese pictures for its online photo mapping service, Street View. The company is also facing similar battle in Greece where its Street Views service has been banned from collecting images of Greek streets.
Google is facing a more serious problems in Greece, where privacy officials have banned Google’s Street View project altogether. The Hellenic Data Protection Authority needs more information from Google about how long it plans to store photos and how Google will protect personal privacy before the HDPA allows Google to continue shooting in Greece, according to CNN.
Street View, which was first introduced in the U.S. in May 2007, delivers 360-degree close-up views of city streets as they would be seen by someone driving along them. The images are linked to the company’s Google Maps and Google Earth applications.
The service has met with varying levels of resistance as it moves beyond to countries outside the U.S., as countries and cultures with differing expectations of privacy have fought to keep the company’s image-capturing vehicles off their streets.
However, in both Japan and Greece, Google plans to blur license plates and human faces as it has done in other countries where Street View has taken photographs.
Google in a statement assured Japanese privacy groups that it would lower the cameras on its cars by 40 cm (16 inches) after complaints they were capturing images over fences in private homes.
But it said it would continue filming in Japan, where it has so far covered 12 cities.
“It is certainly a fact that there have been concerns,” said Yoshito Funabashi, a spokesman at Google’s Tokyo office. “We thought of what we can do as a company and tried to be responsible.”
Google said it has also blurred car number plates in the pictures, as it has done in Europe, but the new steps did not convince Japanese campaigners.
“They are just trying to get through at the technological level … The question is, can we allow for them to shoot (images) unselectively?” said Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo.
In Greece, Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo said the Mountain View, Calif.-based company would provide the DPA with further clarifications.
“Google takes privacy very seriously, and that is why we have put in place a number of features, including the blurring of faces and license plates, to ensure that Street View will respect local norms when it launches in Greece,” Filadelfo said. Google also allows people to request to have images removed.
In a statement, the DPA said, “Simply blurring the license plates of the car is not considered an adequate form of notification. The authority has reserved judgment on the legality of the service pending the submission of additional information, and until that time will not allow (Google) to start gathering photographs.”
Of course, Google said it will do what it can to prove to the DPA that it can and will protect the privacy of Greeks.
Street View is already available in U.S., the U.K., Spain, Australia and has received tacit approval to begin shooting images on city streets in other countries such as Canada.
Street View also faced protests in the U.K., but in April Britain’s privacy watchdog said Street View carries a small risk to privacy but not enough to warrant removing or shutting down the service.
Both Google Maps and its other mapping service, Google Earth, have also been criticized by some countries for providing images of sensitive locations, such as military bases.