Europe may block Google's Street View

Ground-level images of cities may infringe privacy laws, says regulator

Privacy concerns could see European regulators prevent Google from adding street-level photo images to its mapping service.

The search engine's Street View tool gives 360 degree views of hotspots in over 40 US cities. First launched in May 2007, the software has yet to be applied to European cities but Google has already started collecting images for this purpose.

Peter Hustinx, data protection supervisor for the EU, warned that the provision of these images may violate privacy laws. "Making pictures everywhere is certainly going to create some problems," he said, speaking the presentation of his annual report.

Hustinx also said he was sure that Google would take privacy legislation into account when planning the release of its products.

Earlier this year the search company agreed to fulfil a request from the Pentagon to remove selected images relating to US Army bases. Other critics have objected to the fact that people caught in Google's photos are having their images put online without their consent.

This week a blog posting from a Google employee demonstrated a software tool which aims to automatically blur the faces of people appearing in its images. The post admits that the software still needs some work, since it currently also blurs the faces of horses in New York's Central park.