Stop that Streetview car!

Tue 7 April 2009 11:12, Bas van den Beld

Streetview makes a lot of people happy, mainly because it gives them a chance to look at their own street, village or town, but also because it gives them a legitamite reason to secretly look into other peoples gardens.

The secret of success of services like Streetview or for example housing-selling sites rely much on the curiousity of people. Residents of a town in the UK felt that curiousity had gone far enough. They stopped a Google Streetview car.

When a resident of the town of Broughton spotted the Streetview-car entering the town he called in his neighbours. They stopped the vehicle and prevented it from going further.

To the BBC the resident who spotted the car explained: "I don't have a problem with Google wanting to promote villages. What I have a problem with is the invasion of privacy, taking pictures directly into the home....If they were simply going to view the street as a street scene rather than drive almost into people's drives and take pictures of the houses - I think that's a different issue."

The residents called the police but when they showed up the Streetview car already left.

Google responded like it always does: "We were careful to ensure that all images abide by UK law," Google said. "Imagery is taken on public property and is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”

One wonders if the Streetview-car was taking pictures during the cordon because these are pictures you would love to see on Google Streetview...

<French are connecting online

UK government 'selling' porn links?>

Comments (2)

- OldMatt
- [website]
I can't believe people are so closed minded about this. As has been mentioned elsewhere, there's enough information available to potential crooks on mapping software's satellite view anyway. All this extra publicity tells me is the lack of police response time to the village :-)

Tue 7 Apr 2009, 12:20
- Dan Alderson
- [website]
To follow on from Matt's comment it was also mentioned that Streetview could be used by burglars to look at peoples homes. But what is to stop them walking past the house and having a look!

Tue 7 Apr 2009, 12:45

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