Japanese Group Says Google Street View Violates Privacy Rights

Citing privacy concerns, a group of Japanese professors and lawyers reportedly is calling on the Internet’s advertising and search leader to get rid of a service that gives users detailed street-level images via satellite.

 

According to Reuters (News - Alert) reporter Yoko Kubota, the group – calling itself the Campaign Against Surveillance Society – says that the “Street View” feature of Google Inc.’s Google Maps offering violates rights to privacy.

 

Kubota reports that the group’s leader – Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo – believes that Google’s (News - Alert) giving Web users the ability virtually to drive down a street and look around, violates human rights.

 

“It is necessary to warn society that an IT giant is openly violating privacy rights, which are important rights that the citizens have, through this service,” Kubota said.

 

 

Here’s a screen shot of Google Street View, showing San Francisco’s Steiner Street:

 

 

This isn’t the first time that people have complained about perceived dangers in Google’s free, satellite-based applications.

 

As tech news site TG Daily Managing Editor Wolfgang Gruener reported earlier this month, the terrorists who attacked India’s Mumbai, formerly Bombay, killing nearly 200 citizens, apparently used another free app, Google Earth, to memorize digital satellite images of the city in order to find their targets and coordinate their attacks

 

“The police also learned that the terrorists relied on satellite phones and GPS equipment to navigate to their targets,” Gruener reports.

 

Officials with security agencies in India, China and other nations have voiced concerns that Google Earth exposes defense installations and unveils secret military installations, Gruener reports.

 

“Media also reported that protesters in London used Google Earth to plan how to get to the rooftop of the Parliament building in London,” he said.

 

Complaints about Google Earth haven’t been limited to foreign nations.

 

In the United States, a woman was shown sunbathing on Google Earth, Reuters reports, and in another a man was pictured exiting a strip club in San Francisco.

 

“In March, Google said it would comply with a Pentagon request to remove some online images from Street View over fears they posed a security threat to U.S. military bases,” according to the news service.