Who's Google Mapping You?

Google has been forced to remove some images from its new Street View facility after receiving complaints regarding privacy issues.

The device, which was released on Thursday, allows people to take a virtual 360-degree tour of 25 UK cities. The footage is so clear that people’s faces and car registration plates can easily be identified. Images removed included a man entering a London sex shop, people being arrested and a man being sick.

Google spent over a year collecting footage of Britain’s streets using cars fitted with special cameras which have travelled from London to Dundee. It took longer than expected due to long periods of wet weather spoiling the clarity of the images.

While some find Street View fascinating, others have condemned the new tool arguing that it is a gross invasion of privacy, leaving people vulnerable to crime and embarrassment.

A number of privacy organisations have strongly protested against the facility vowing to fight the service until it is taken down. And a couple in America have already tried and failed to sue Google for privacy intrusion after the judge said that they could not prove they had suffered as a result of having their home photographed.

Google’s geospatial technologist Ed Parsons defended the mapping service by saying: "We recognise that people do have some concerns in terms of privacy but this is the sort of level of detail you would get from driving down a road, the sort of picture you would see in an estate agent’s window."

He said faces were blurred 99.9 per cent of the time but that sometimes it doesn’t work completely.