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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

όχι!

The Hellenic Republic has told Google to postpone sending their Street View camera cars to Greek roads until they can assure the government that it does not violate the strict privacy laws of Greece in any way. USA TODAY reports that this decision was made on May 11th by the Data Protection Authority of Greece.


The Hellenic Data Protection Authority stated that "simply marking the car" is not a good enough method of notifying Greece of the presence of Google cars roaming the nation.

The Authority has also halted kapou.gr until it uses more privacy features like face-blurring, which Google Street View already provides.

This Greek order could set the standard for many other possible Street View-covered nations in the future. However, Germany and Switzerland have already laid down the law in front of Google before. Germany seems to be allowing the images soon, but Switzerland has not made any such promises yet, as far as we know.

Privacy issues haven't been a challenge for Google in the past, and this new Greek stuff is unlikely to become a problem for them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but it's a bit naive (and soon) to state that the Greek situation is unlikely to cause problems for Google. There has been some intense media coverage over this and the fact that Google has to reshoot its Japan imagery to lower the camera by 16 inches. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if other countries start dictating whether and how Google photographs their streets.

I don't mind admitting I'm a Google Street View fan girl but let's be realistic.