London — Barely days after its launch, the UK version of Google Maps Street View, has drawn the wrath of the public, as well as academics and politicians. According to reports in the BBC, a formal complaint about Google’s Street View service has been sent to the Information Commissioner (ICO) in the UK, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant has been forced to pull out a considerable number of offensive images from its databases, after a number of early testers identifying images of themselves in the photos.
Regardless of the service, that was rolled out with a great deal of publicity, the public did not seem to appreciate the poor privacy standards dictated by the web application.
As a result, the privacy group cites more than 200 reports from members of the public identifiable via the service, with dozens of images containing revealing images such as that of a man entering a sex shop, people being arrested, revealing excessive details on homes, and so on, have been removed from Google’s databases.
Privacy International wants the ICO to look again at how Street View works.
“The ICO has time and again made it clear that it believes that in Street View the necessary safeguards are in place to protect people’s privacy,” said Google.
The service, available for 25 UK cities, gives a 360-degree view of any particular streets through merging photos collected by Google drivers using car-mounted cameras.
Privacy International (PI) director Simon Davies said his organization had filed the complaint given the “clear embarrassment and damage” Street View had caused to many Britons.
He said Street View fails to satisfy the assurances given to the ICO that enabled the system to launch.
“We are asking for the system to be switched off while an investigation is completed,” said Davies.
“The Information Commissioner never comprehended the gravity of how a malignant piece of legislation could affect ordinary lives,” he added.
Images so far has been removed include a man vomiting in Shoreditch and another man outside a Soho sex shop. Replacing them is now a message that reads: “This image is no longer available.”
According to reports, Google has said that the number of images removed has been “less than expected”.
“The tools are available for users to remove pictures they are not satisfied with,” a Google spokesman said in a statement.
Google used cars equipped with special cameras to collect photos of the streets of twenty-five UK cities, prompting a wave of people trying to find themselves. Some people, however, were less than happy with what they found, and contacted Google to have images removed.
Additionally, as a Google spokesperson explained, anyone who would like to can submit a request to have their images removed, which the search giant will promptly do. As for those photos that have already been deleted, Google’s Laura Scott commented: “We have got millions of images, so the percentage removed was very small. We want this to be a useful tool, and it is people’s right to have their image removed”.
Dr. Ian Brown, a privacy expert at the Oxford Internet Institute, said he was not surprised that there were some offending images, “This is exactly what you would expect from a service that relies on individuals to help Google not make mistakes,” he said, “Google should have thought more carefully about how they designed the service to avoid exactly this sort of thing.” Dr. Brown’s solution to the problem, was for Google to have taken the pictures twice, on different days, which is easy for him to say, but Google drove over 22,000 miles while taking the pictures.
In July 2008, the ICO awarded permission for Street View to launch partly because of assurances Google gave about the way it would blur faces and registration plates.
Since the Street View service was launched in the UK on 19 March, Privacy International has been contacted by many people identifiable via the service.
Among them complaining were two colleagues pictured in an apparently compromising position who suffered embarrassment when the image was circulated at their workplace.
Ever since the Street View service was launched in the U.S. in May 2007, Google is still dealing with privacy cases. Street View is now available in a total of nine countries including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy and, since Thursday, in the Netherlands as well.
Last year, a high-profile legal case flared up when a US Pennsylvania couple sued Google for trespass and invasion of privacy, after the firm took pictures of their drive which was marked with “Private Road” and “No Trespassing” signs.
The couple said that the pictures had caused their home to diminish in value by $25,000, but the US court ruled in Google’s favor.
“Data protection is a question of taking reasonable steps,” said Nick Lockett, an IT lawyer with DL Legal.
“If Street View is infringing privacy then almost anything you can do with data is going to be infringing privacy,” he added.
Struan Robertson, a legal director at Pinsent Masons, said he did not think the turning on of Street View would result in court action against Google for breaching privacy.
“That is largely because we have got rulings from the courts on when a photograph risks privacy rights and when it does not,” he said.
Responding to the filing of the complaint, Google said: “Before launching Street View we sought the guidance and approval of the independent and impartial Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).”
In a statement Google said the ICO had re-iterated its confidence that Street View did enough to protect privacy.
“The fact that some people have used the tools in place to remove images shows that the tools work effectively,” it added.
“Of course, if anyone has concerns about the product or its images they can contact us and we look forward to hearing from them,” it said.
Google and the ICO could not immediately be reached for comment.