Not the UK
The United Kingdom, home to some 4.23 million CCTV cameras, has a problem with Google Street View. It seems that a busybody privacy rights organization, Privacy International, objects to Google’s commercial use of photos that include people. For-profit photos should have the express written consent of the people in them, it argues. Not unreasonable if you can clearly identify the person, I suppose.
For its part, Google says it’s complying with all local laws.
Google has a track record of annoying people, like those Pennsylvania folks that said Street View lowered the value of its property.
I wonder, what’s so bad about having a low-res photo of yourself on Google Street View, really?
I actually agree with these “busybody” privacy rights organizations. In this world of near zero privacy, I’m glad someone is out there looking out for our personal interests, and not just the interests of corporations. You can say I’m a tree-hugging, bleeding-heart liberal for saying that, but screw it – I don’t want Google to use my image without me giving them permission. That doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable to me. If there’s a picture of me on Google Street View walking next to some hottie and my girlfriend sees it, I don’t wanna deal with that shitstorm. I really don’t think it’s too much to ask that I have some control over how my image is used on the internet. There is too much room for inappropriate use for us as citizens to give up this basic privacy.
Besides, they have imaging technology these days that can simply remove people from the images… Use that!
Maybe they could blur people out unless someone saw themselves and explicitly asked to appear on it
We have Street Level View already live in London provided by Seety, check out….
http://www.novaloca.com/blog/index.php/2008/10/17/view-londons-commercial-property-in-street-level-view-with-novalocas-maps/
We’ve also done something very similar for our commercial property portal. We have mashed together Google street view with MS live birds eye view. We found that these two platforms offer the highest quality. Check out Commercial property