In August, Privacy Commissioner in Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, expressed major concern over Google’s Street View venture in major Canadian cities. This is due to Canada’s stricter privacy laws and their worries over its citizens being included in images without their consent.
“From our point of view, if you spot yourself and you perceive that as a violation of your privacy rights, then the act has already been violated,” said Colin McKay, Stoddart’s spokesman.
Well, it seems that Google has heard these voiced concerns and is willing to make alterations to the current Street View images that are available for major cities in the U.S.
“We would launch Street View in Canada in keeping with the principles and requirements of Canadian law… that means we know we’ll have to focus on finding ways to make sure that individual’s faces are not identifiable in pictures taken in Canada and that license plate numbers are not identifiable in Canada,” said Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel for Google. Fleischer is currently in Montreal for an assembly of privacy experts from around the globe.
He added that while the U.S. has allowed for the taking and posting of pictures taken in public, Google is “aware that different countries around the world strike a different balance between this idea of a public place on the one hand and people’s expectation of privacy.”
These modifications seem to be satisfactory for McKay, who said, “If that’s how they’re planning to roll out their service by putting in place technological means… to block out faces and license plates and other essential personal information, then that’s a great first step.”
Fleischer indicated that Canadian cities had approached Google to ask them to be featured in its Street View project. He quotes them as saying, “‘Please come and start taking this imagery of our city. It’s good for our tourist industry and we’ll even pay you or reimburse your expenses to do so.’”
He went on to point out Google’s trailblazing move related to the length of time personal search data was kept, as well as how the company drastically decreased the length of time cookies would be kept on file.
Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070924/wr_nm/google_canada_dc;_ylt=AiPp0xxs5wQve1btXylGy.v6VbIF
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070924.wgtgoogprivacy0924/BNStory/Business/columnists
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