By Tom Espiner, 18 May 2009 08:57
NEWS
Google's privacy counsel Peter Fleischer has said people "will get used" to Street View.
Last month, villagers in the Buckinghamshire town of Broughton surrounded a Street View car and forced it to leave, the Times reported. The villagers were worried that their houses may be targeted, following a spate of burglaries in the area.
Fleischer told silicon.com sister site ZDNet UK at a data protection conference on Wednesday that people would come to accept the technology.
"It's a new service, people will get used to it over time, and understand the benefits and the risks," said Fleischer. "Fears are easy to imagine on day one. The benefits of building on top of services only become clear later."
Fleischer said that people's fears of burglary being facilitated by Street View had been stoked by the media.
"If the media say this will help burglars then people will react to that," said Fleischer. "Privacy controls have been built into the product. We have a mismatch between the perception of the fears, and the benefits."
Comments
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1. Bagpus
Doesn't matter if what Google are doing is legal or not, street view is morally wrong, ask any MP, oh wait...
2. anonymous
Street View is amazing... I've been very busy and had my head in the sand for a while so I didn't know it was live yet... I used google earth to look for a street map for a date I was due to go on and accidentally found I could actually see the whole street, house by house!... I could see the street signs, some door numbers and even that I could not park outside until after 10pm, but there was alternative parking close by... I had to refrain from asking "Is it the one with the green door?" so that I didn't look like a crazed stalker!...
But it can be used for so many wonderful things like finding a friends house, checking out the local parking and planning a defensible position for when the dead rise from their graves... all in all I think google are providing us with another wonderful peice of tech.
I wonder if we'll get realtime feeds in the far and distant future?... now that'll cause a stir!
3. Niss
I simply can't understand how information, which is already in the pubic domain, can be subjected to any privacy considerations...
Most burglars are opportunists with one form of addiction or another while the more sophisticated ones probably need much more information than just the front of a building...
…and I thought that there are laws to stop ill informed mobs from running the streets…
Well done Google again for being creative thinkers and getting our world one step closer to a better information and communication infrastructure, which is after all the basic requirement for long term success in all our economies…
4. karen challinor
"It's a new service, people will get used to it over time, and understand the benefits and the risks," said Fleischer
hold your head underwater long enough and you'll get used to that as well, albeit briefly