Privacy fears over Google's 'candid camera' street maps
Google calls the latest change to its online maps Street View – but it is looking more like Candid Camera.
In San Francisco, there is a man picking his nose on a street corner; at Stanford University, there are a couple sunbathing in bikinis; in Miami, there is a group of protesters carrying signs outside an abortion clinic.
In other cities, you can see men entering adult book stores or leaving strip clubs.
The feature provides high-resolution photos to enable street-level tours so users can get a more realistic, 360-degree look at locations.
But potentially embarrassing or compromising scenes are raising questions about whether the internet’s leading search engine has gone too far in its latest attempt to make the world a more accessible place.
“Everyone expects a certain level of anonymity as they move about their daily lives,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group devoted to protecting people's rights on the internet.
Street View was introduced on Google maps for the San Francisco Bay area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami earlier this week.
The California-based company is already planning to expand the service to other US cities and other countries.
Privacy experts believe these kinds of issues are bound to arise as technology makes it increasingly easy to share pictures and video on the internet, pitting the rights of free expression against the rights to personal privacy.
“What you have to do is balance out the perception against the reality and I think in this case, the perception is much scarier than the reality,” said Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility, a policy group.
To guard against privacy intrusions, Google said all the photos were taken from vehicles driving along public streets during the past year. The photos will be updated periodically, but the company has not specified a timetable.
“This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street,” Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said. “Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world.”
Google is not the first company to try this. Amazon.com launched a similar mapping feature in January 2005 on a search engine called A9.com. That search engine’s former chief executive, Udi Manber, now works for Google.
Microsoft began displaying street-level pictures on its online maps for San Francisco and Seattle late last year.
A9’s photographic maps, abandoned late last year, raised privacy concerns about women being seen entering domestic violence shelters.
Hoping to avoid similar complaints, Google tried to identify potentially sensitive locations by contacting the Safety Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, much to the delight of Cindy Southworth, the group’s director.
“We were thrilled that a major technology company like this reached out in this way to help protect these victims,” she said.
Google also is offering a “help” button on all the street-level photos to provide a link for users to request the removal of an image that is objectionable or clearly identifies a person who does not want to be included. Company spokeswoman Victoria Grand said Google had received “very few” removal requests so far.
Eileen Diamond, administrator of A Choice For Women clinic, is hoping she can persuade Google to replace its current picture of a Miami, Florida, street corner where protesters gather once a week to protest at abortions performed there.
The picture, still available on Google’s maps last night, includes a cluster of protesters standing outside the clinic, an image that Diamond worries will scare away potential patients or perhaps attract troublemakers.
“It’s sort of disturbing because it’s certainly not the kind of message we want to be sending out,” said Diamond. “It’s already very painful for our patients to come in. We want them to feel safe and protected.”
Because Google’s street-level pictures were taken in public places, the company appeared to be on solid legal ground, according to both Bankston and Weinstein.
But Weinstein fears that some of the issues raised by Google’s new service might inspire overly repressive laws.
“It’s a tough area, but it just seems there is no way around the fact that public spaces are public spaces,” Weinstein said.
“You don’t want to create an environment where it becomes illegal to take photos in public. It can be riskier not to be able to see something than it is to be able to see something.”
