With the arrival of Google Street View in Australia, concerns have been raised concerning potential transgressions of people’s privacy…
“Take extra-special care of your appearance when walking around Australian capital city streets this summer, as one nose pick or bum scratch could be immortalized on Google Maps forever…”
Google’s occasionally controversial Street View product is heading outside of the United States.
Australia looks likely to be the 4th Google territory with a Google Street View car spotted in Sydney, according to the SMH . Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin confirmed the sighting, saying that the images taken will be added to Google Maps some time next year.
The controversial Google Street View project has already captured images in 17 cities in North America, taken at street level and attached them to the highly popular Google Maps online application, has now arrived in Australia taking snaps of major cities and towns.
The Street View program has not been without its critics in the United States as well, particularly when Google has shown pictures of people entering adult book stores and doing other things they would rather not have on the internet.
Google Street View cars have been spotted in the United Kingdom in September and in Canada , where the privacy aspects of Google capturing street images resulted in a lot of talk as to whether it was legal or not to walk down the a street in Toronto, take a picture and post it on the internet.
Google Maps Street View competes with Microsoft’s Street side and startup Everyscape, the latter also taking pictures inside of buildings as well as from the outside.
Commenting on Street View’s move into the country, David Vaile, executive director of the University of New South Wales’ Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, expressed his hope that Google is transparent in its attempts to protect privacy.
He stated: “The gold standard for something like this would be a public privacy impact assessment … coupled with a commitment to comply fully with Australian law and legal protections, without seeking to use its corporate structure to escape through jurisdictional tricks.”
Vaile also raised concerns over the potential of Street View to cause embarrassment to individuals through people being recognized by others in compromising situations.
Google-branded cars with roof-mounted cameras have just begun traversing our streets, taking highly detailed panoramic street-level photos for a new Maps feature called Street View.
Once the photos go up next year, Google Maps users will be able to explore the country at ground-level for the first time with little more than a computer and an internet connection.
The project has already raised the ire of privacy activists, but Google says it is finding ways to ensure individuals’ faces and license plate numbers are not identifiable.
Google Australia’s head of corporate communications Rob Shilkin said Australia’s privacy laws were tighter than those in the United States, and that no one’s privacy would be compromised.
“We are giving very considerable thought to how best to safeguard Australian’s privacy, including consulting experts and community groups, while enabling all Australians to benefit from this new feature,” Shilkin said.
“We are focusing on finding ways to ensure that individuals’ faces are not identifiable in pictures taken in Australia and that license plate numbers are not identifiable in Australia.”
Street View launched in the US in May this year and has since expanded into fifteen US cities. But many of the original photographs — including a woman exposing her g-string, a man striding into an adult bookshop and another man apparently relieving himself on the pavement were since taken down due to privacy concerns.
“But Street View is not only good for a peri or a peek into your neighbor’s window – it has also been a boon for retailers and tourism operators, who see it as a valuable source of free advertising.”
Cameras mounted on top of “Google labeled” cars, will travel around Australian cities and towns, pausing to take a 360 degree photo, record the location of the image using a GPS, and then move to the next location.
“The cars are currently in our capital cities and we hope to provide more information about further locations we will be driving in Australia,” Shilkin said, adding the images will be collected throughout summer and are likely to appear online in the second half of next year.”
He said Street View would only feature images that anyone can see walking down a public street, and stressed Google was consulting experts and community groups to determine how best to safeguard Australians’ privacy.
“Vaile is also concerned that Street View may result in unexpected situations that would cause embarrassment to individuals.”
“What if you happen to have two people of different sex on a back verandah and you have a wife that sees this and says ‘that looks like my husband, but who else is there?’” Vaile said.
“He asked Google to guarantee it would obscure faces and number plates, and accept legal liability under Australian law if someone’s privacy is invaded.”
“There is a question about their actual commitment when something goes wrong to accept liability in the Australian jurisdiction for all the consequences of what might happen, without quibbling and sort of relying on technicalities and loop holes,” Vaile said.
Google is also planning to launch the feature in Canada, but as with Australia, Google said it would endeavor to not have identifiable faces and license plates. The promise came after Canada’s privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, said Street View would breach Canadian privacy laws.
Despite the concerns, there are many who are looking forward to Australia being added to the Street View stable, including geography teachers, tourism operators and real estate agents.
“Google Street View will help give people buying property a great feel for the local neighborhoods and streets that they might be interested in,” Ray White Real Estate Balmain proprietor, Matthew Cooper said.
“It will improve consumer’s knowledge and ability to make real estate choices that best suit them.”
Shilkin was reluctant to provide details on where or when the cars would be capturing images. “I do not want to announce any particular locations to raise expectations or cause disappointment,” he said.
In less than a year, online mapping website Google Maps has become the most popular mapping tool in Australia.
Google Maps recently surpassed Whereis.com.au as the most popular online mapping service in Australia. According to Nielsen NetRatings data for the quarter ending October 31, Google Maps attracted 2.984 million unique users compared to 2.698 million for Whereis.
“We are thrilled with the response that Google Maps has had since it launched in Australia in February,” Google Australia’s group product manager Carl Sjogreen, said.
“It has become an extremely popular tool for Australians to visualize, share and search for geographic information.”
Earlier this year, Google announced the addition of Mapplets, which are third party layers of information that can be easily viewed by users in Google Maps.
Mapplets have been used to highlight the location of electoral boundaries, national parks and even petrol prices in Perth.
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