'Candid camera' street map fears
Updated on 02 June 2007
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.
And 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.
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.
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