August 14, 2007

Google Maps' Photo Features Raises Privacy Questions

Last week, Google Inc. began expanding its Google Maps program to Southern California, and anyone who got in the way became subjects in the firm's version of "Candid Camera." The additions from Los Angeles, San Diego and some Orange County cities, as well as Houston and Orlando, expands an online service that thrilled some digital-map buffs but freaked out privacy advocates when it launched in May in the San Francisco Bay area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami. The photos can help people scout out places they plan to visit. But when Google's camera shutters click, they capture more than buildings. Within hours of the first release, bloggers had found and posted photographs, which are often sharp enough to identify the people in them, of vulnerable moments: students sunbathing in bikinis at Stanford University, motorists being ticketed by police, a man walking into an adult bookstore in Oakland, even a man picking his nose on a San Jose park bench.

Google raises privacy issue, Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2007.