A new feature from popular search engine Google is giving Web-surfers a street-level view of cities, but for some, the tool is much too close for comfort.
The Street View feature was introduced to Google Maps last week. It enables users to zoom in on selected streets so closely that they can view vehicles, addresses, licence plates and even people.
The feature is currently available in New York, San Francisco, Denver, Miami and Las Vegas. Google plans to expand the tool to other cities and countries in the near future. Canada is also included among the future plans; however, there is no schedule for the tool's implementation in this country, according to Canada AM technology expert Kris Abel.
"They use a set of vehicles, cars and vans that have a special camera mounted on top on the roof of the vehicle and they just drive down the street," Abel told CTV's Canada AM. "The cameras have lenses pointed in all directions. And as they drive, it takes photographs every couple of feet. When they get back, they assemble them into these interactive photos."
The Street View feature allows users to view high-resolution images and to obtain a 360-degree tour of places they may have been or would like to visit. It is being touted as a helpful resource for travellers to obtain information but it has also sparked a debate over the privacy implications of the service.
Ever-conscious of the privacy issue, Google has ensured the images were taken by vehicles driving down public streets over the past year. They will be updated periodically over a period of time.
"This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street," Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said in a statement.
Despite Google's assertions, concerns over privacy have not been allayed.
One woman, Mary Kalin-Casey, typed in the address of the tool and found that she could zoom in so closely that she could see her cat sitting in window of her apartment. Unnerved by what she saw, Kalin-Casey sent an email to the blog Boing Boing and voiced her concerns about how close the Street View tool can get, according to The New York Times.
"Everyone expects a certain level of anonymity as they move about their daily lives," Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group devoted to protecting people's rights on the Internet told The Associated Press. "There is a certain 'ick' factor here."
Bankston is referring to potentially embarrassing images that are being captured by the Street View feature.
Images of a man picking his nose on a street in San Francisco, students sunbathing at Stanford University, and protestors carrying signs outside a Miami abortion clinic are among the images that have been captured for the world to see.
However some experts do not feel the threat to privacy is significant.
"What you have to do is balance out the perception against the reality, and I think in this case, the perception is much scarier than the reality," Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility, a policy group told the Associated Press.
Google has been proactive in identifying potentially contentious images and is providing a 'Help' link for users to request the removal of an objectionable image or a person who does not want to be identified in the captured images. According to company spokeswoman Victoria Grand there have been "very few" removal requests to this point.
Microsoft began displaying street level pictures for Seattle and San Francisco last year and Amazon.com launched a similar mapping feature in January 2005 on a search engine called A9.com. Udi Manber, who was A9's search engine former chief executive is now a Google employee.
Privacy concerns over women seen entering domestic violence shelters eventually shut down the A9 feature. Google has taken steps to identify similar instances by contacting organizations such as the Safety Net Project at the U.S. National Network to End Domestic Violence.
With files from The Associated Press
