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Google's detailed streetscapes raise privacy concerns
Carly Weeks,
CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 11, 2007
OTTAWA -- Canada's Privacy Commissioner has raised concerns over a new Google program that lets users view and zoom in on street-level photographs that are so clear and precise, they can pinpoint an unknowing bystander and their exact location with the click of a mouse button.
Google's new Street View application uses photographs captured at an earlier date to let computer users navigate through city streets and neighbourhoods in major cities quickly and easily.
But the program, which relies on pictures taken without the knowledge or consent of people in them, seems to violate many basic rights of citizens and poses a serious threat to personal privacy, according to Jennifer Stoddart.
Pictures available on the Street View application -- which so far only shows images of U.S. cities -- showcase the embarrassing to the mundane. From a man waiting for the bus to a person coming out of a pornography shop, all of the images can be quickly and easily accessed just by going online. Numerous Web sites have already popped up to allow users to post funny or embarrassing photographs of people and places spotted using the Street View application.
Although the program only focuses on the United States at this point, Google is eager to expand the service. "We're focused on making this service available in as many cities as possible," Google spokeswoman Wendy Rozeluk wrote an in e-mail. "We will be adding Street View imagery for new cities on an ongoing basis."
The program's potential risks have prompted the privacy commissioner to send letters this week to Google -- and the Canadian company that has been providing some of the photographs -- outlining her concerns and seeking an explanation over whether sufficient precautions and safeguards are in place to protect privacy.
"The problem is it's a slippery slope when it comes to privacy rights," said Colin McKay, spokesman for the federal privacy commissioner's office. "You can read house numbers and see street signs. You can clearly see facial characteristics."
Unlike other mapping programs, which use grainy satellite images, the new street-view program allows users to view crisp photographs of pedestrians, homes, businesses and traffic taken from the street level. Many of the photographs are believed to have been taken using high-resolution video cameras mounted on cars as they drive through cities.
Google said it places a high priority on privacy and is not doing anything wrong.
"This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world," Ms. Rozeluk said.
But the privacy commissioner is concerned that if the service is expanded into Canada, it could violate federal privacy laws designed to protect citizens from having their personal information easily accessible.
The street-view application "does not appear to meet the basic requirements of knowledge, consent, and limited collection and use" of personal information that is set out in Canada's privacy laws, the commissioner wrote in her letter to Google's chief legal officer David Drummond.
The commissioner is also taking aim at Calgary-based Immersive Media Corp., a digital video imaging company that is responsible for taking many of the photographs that appear on the Google street-view application.
Despite the fact the Google application isn't available in Canadian cities yet, the commissioner's office is particularly concerned with the fact Immersive Media's Web site boasts that it has already collected digital images of Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.
The company also appears to have already made the images from those cities commercially available on their Web site, which raises concerns about the inability of individuals to maintain their privacy.
"Many of the images are of sufficient resolution and close enough to allow individuals to be identified, to discern what activities they are engaged in and to situate their geographic whereabouts," Ms. Stoddart wrote in a letter to Immersive Media CEO Myles McGovern.
Google has agreed to remove some photographs of people upon request of an individual, but the commissioner said that is only a "partial solution" and doesn't address the fact some people may not even be aware their images are publicly available.