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Google has announced plans to bring its new Street View technology to Canada -- the announcement coming one day after a British-based privacy watchdog filed a formal complaint against the service.

While Google Earth offers a bird's eye view of street addresses around the world, Street View puts users at ground level, offering a 360-degree view of houses, cars or people who were in the area when the images were recorded.

Users can even zoom in for a closer look. Faces are blurred as part of Google's privacy policy with the technology, but critics argue that it is invasive to residents and passersby.

On Tuesday, Google said the technology is coming to Canada "in the near future," but gave no firm date for when the service will become available here.

But the company did say its special car-mounted cameras will take to streets in 11 major Canadian cities in the coming weeks, from Saint John, N.B. to Vancouver, to begin collecting the necessary images.

One day earlier, in a letter to British Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, Privacy International's Simon Davis said Google isn't doing enough to protect the privacy rights of residents.

Davis states that the group has received more than 200 reports from people who say their faces were not properly blurred by the service.

"We believe on the basis of complaints received, that the service has created numerous instances of embarrassment and distress and that the promised privacy safeguards do not provide adequate protection to shield Street View from the general requirement to provide notice prior to collection of the data," the letter states.

The group is calling on the information commissioner to investigate, and to shut down the service in the meantime.

The letter includes what Privacy International said is correspondence with Google. In those letters, the company admits "our blurring technology is not perfect -- we occasionally miss a face or a licence plate."

But Google maintains that the necessary safeguards are in place, and that the ICO has already given its approval for the technology to be used in the U.K.

Google Street View is so far available in the U.S., U.K., Netherlands, France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.