Google has bumped into problems with Street View in yet another country. This time it’s India. According to website MediaNama, three weeks after it began driving the local police commissioner in Bangalore notified Google that it must stop photographing the city until a number of issues can be resolved. Google told the publication it had […]
I’m at the D Conference in here beautiful Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is to be interviewed by our fearless host Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Let’s see what he has to say. Postscript: See The Top 10 Things Eric Schmidt Revealed At D9 if you want the less stream-of-consciousness view […]
Google has appealed a recent Swiss court decision that requires the company to guarantee 100% anonymity of faces and license plates in its Street View imagery, and says it may cut the service altogether in Switzerland if the ruling isn’t changed. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google attorney Peter Fleischer told reporters, “We simply […]
Austrian officials have lifted an almost year-long ban on Google Street View, but Google says it has no current plans to offer the service there, anyway. According to the Austrian Independent, Austria’s Data Protection Commission (DSK) announced on Thursday that it was ending the ban that started in May 2010; that’s when Google admitted that […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing’s Read/Write World: An Ambitious Project To Bridge Maps With Movies, Photos, Local Data & More It’s probably not something that you can wrap your head around pretty quickly. It’s also […]
While some countries have already completed their investigations, Belgium is just now launching a probe into Google’s collection of Wifi data over unsecured WiFi networks. According to the Flemish newspaper De Morgen, Belgian data protection officials believe Google is guilty of a “flagrant violation of privacy protection laws.” A Bloomberg report says the Belgian privacy […]
Well, that didn’t take long. Just days after announcing plans to operate its Streetside map/photo service in Germany, Microsoft is already dealing with its first governmental objection. Thomas Kranig, head of the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection, has issued a statement (in German; here’s a Google translation to English) giving objections to Bing’s plans […]
Hoping to avoid the problems that have plagued Google’s Street View service, Microsoft says it will launch its version — Streetside — in Germany next month. Microsoft Germany tells Deutsche Welle that Streetside vehicles will begin driving in four cities (Nuremberg, Furth, Erlangen and Augsburg) on May 9th. The images should be online sometime this […]
A Swiss court says Google must make sure all faces and license plates are blurred on Google Street View, even if Google has to blur them by hand. That’s one of several pieces of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court decision handed down today, and the one that’s likely causing the most disappointment at Google. The […]
Google has agreed to have independent privacy audits over the next 20 years, to settle an FTC investigation into wrong doing over its Google Buzz product. The FTC has release a statement where Google agreed to allow independent audits of how Google handles privacy controls. After Google Buzz launched there was a lot of concern […]
Google’s Gingerbread (Android 2.3) offers near field communication (NFC) support, which can be used for both “contactless payments” and marketing purposes. People tend to think about and discuss NFC in the context of “mobile wallets” and payments exclusively but there’s a great deal more it can do. For example, Google has been testing NFC-based marketing […]
German publication Deutsche Welle is reporting that a Berlin court has vindicated Google Street View operation in Germany. In late 2010 Street View went live in Oberstaufen, a small town in Bavaria. Subsequently it was rolled out in 20 major cities throughout Germany. Around the same time a German woman sued Google claiming that Street […]
According to wire service AFP, France’s data privacy regulator has imposed a EUR 100,000 ($142,000) fine to punish Google for collecting private WiFi data via Street View in France. This is the first fine/penalty any country has levied against Google over the WiFi data collection. When it first occurred, Google acknowledged the data collection but […]
Swiss privacy officials want Google to blur every face in Street View, even it’s by hand. Google typically does facial blurring with automation and says that process works in 99 percent of cases. However there’s that pesky 1 percent of cases where that doesn’t fully obscure people in the photographs. Now the Swiss are telling […]
Here’s a follow-up up on last week’s report: South Korean police have now filed criminal charges against Google over the collection of personal information via unsecured wifi networks. The data was collected by Street View vehicles in South Korea between October 2009 and May 2010. According to the AP story, police examined the data that […]
South Korean police are planning to file criminal charges against Google executives over the collection of personal data via unsecured wifi networks. According to IDG News/PCWorld, the country’s national police agency has determined that Google acted illegally when it gathered personal data as part of its Street View mapping service. A police official says they’re […]
While Google has settled US lawsuits over its Google Buzz product, the company faces a new — and very similar — lawsuit originating in Canada. The Winnipeg Free Press reports that Tyler Wereha of Rosa, Manitoba, is suing Google over privacy issues related to last year’s Google Buzz launch. The class-action lawsuit doesn’t specify damages. […]
Connecticut’s outgoing Attorney General says legal action is a possibility after Google refused to turn over personal data that it’s collected via unsecured wifi networks. Richard Blumenthal tells the Wall Street Journal that he’s “disappointed” by Google’s decision not to respond to recent demands to review data that Google collected from Connecticut businesses and residences. […]
A court case that began in 2008 when a Google Street View vehicle took photos on a private road in Pennsylvania is over. The judgment? Google owes the plaintiffs a dollar. Aaron and Christine Boring originally sued Google with a variety of claims, including invasion of privacy, trespassing, punitive damages, and more after a Street […]
It seems not a week goes by without news of a new investigation into Google’s Street View service, or into Google’s collection of personal data via unencrypted WiFi networks that occurred over three years as Street View vehicles drove the world’s streets. It seems like one country opens an investigation just as another country ends […]
Prosecutors in Italy are investigating Google’s Street View service to determine if the company violated privacy laws when it collected wifi data over unencrypted networks earlier this year. Officials in Rome announced the probe on Wednesday. This is separate from Italy’s request last weekend that Google mark its Street View cars and publish their itineraries […]
In Italy the country’s privacy authorities are asking Google to more clearly mark Street View cars, as well as publicize their itineraries. According to Reuters: Under the regulator’s decision, Google has to publish three days in advance on its website, in local newspapers and on radio in which locality, including which area of a large […]
Having caused PR and legal headaches around the globe for Google the company has decided to permanently discontinue its Street-View-based WiFi data collection. Multiple countries have asserted that Google’s Street View practices violated privacy laws for the collection of personal information from unsecured WiFi networks. Google is being fined in Spain and in Canada the […]
Google’s Street View continues to face resistance, particularly in European countries where the service has more recently been rolling out. Today brings news that privacy officials in the Czech Republic are refusing to allow Google to resume capturing images with its Street View vehicles. According to a story in The Guardian, the Czech Office for […]
Zastavit means stop or halt. And that’s what the Czech government has told Google regarding StreetView image collection in the central European country. The stated reason, according to the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection, is that Google did not have the required license/registration to conduct the activity. It’s not the case that Google failed […]
A busy day for Google on the legal front continues with news that the company has agreed to $8.5 million in payments to settle a federal lawsuit surrounding Google Buzz and privacy. According to AFP, court documents filed today show that seven plaintiffs will get no more than $2,500 each, lawyers that filed the case […]
With lots of mapping news today, we’re combining it all into a single round up, which focuses largely on Google. The company decided, after suspending, examining and “scrubbing” its Street View equipment in Europe and elsewhere, to resume collecting imagery and related data in several countries: Having spoken to the relevant regulators, we have decided […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google, Twitter Argue Against Throttling Speed Of News Google and Twitter have teamed up to support a web site that’s facing legal trouble for reporting news too quickly. Reuters reports that […]
Arguing forcefully that it’s necessary to protect privacy, the “Article 29 Working Party” of the European Parliament has been trying to get search engines to cut their search data retention to six months. But in a crazy turn of events, a proposal that would directly contradict those efforts and require retention for up to 2 […]
Google is backtracking on its previous refusal to hand over private data collected in April by its Street View cars to several European governments. The Financial Times reports that Google will initially give the intercepted data to officials in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy sometime within the next two days. The Financial Times quotes Google […]
Google continues to bump up against frustrated government regulators around the globe who are convinced that the company is doing sneaky things and willfully violating domestic privacy laws. Yesterday European privacy officials continued to express disapproval and assert that Google’s data retention policies violate its six month data retention rule. Today the NY Times covers […]
A broad coalition of interest groups, non-profits and private companies, including Microsoft, Google, AOL, the ACLU, EFF and others, have come together to set forth four principles that would update Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). That statute was enacted in 1986 and, in the words of Jim Dempsey, Vice President for Public Policy at the […]
Google Buzz is having a bad day. I reported earlier about the lack of search interest in Buzz, but there’s a potentially more serious legal problem coming: A group of 11 lawmakers is asking the FTC to investigate whether Google Buzz violated consumer privacy regulations. BusinessWeek reported over the weekend that 11 members of the […]
For a non-European traveling to Europe Google Street View is a great resource. This weekend, for example, the NY Times ran a piece on the Italian region of Tuscany. I then went to Google Maps to investigate how much of the region was available via Street View — a fair amount. That enabled me to […]
In a letter earlier this month, members of the European Union’s data protection group urged Google to make changes to its Street View mapping/photo service and warned that Google might be breaking EU laws. According to Bloomberg News, the letter from the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party asks Google to store unblurred Street View […]
A couple called “Boring” (yes, that’s their surname) sued Google in early 2008 for taking pictures of its suburban Pennsylvania home. The claim was their house was on a clearly marked private road (“Private Road, No Trespassing”) and Google’s Street View mobile trespassed by entering and taking the images of their home. There was also […]
Google will probably be fighting legal battles in European courts and appearing before EU regulators for some time to come. For the time being Google has lost (at least for now) a copyright case in France arising from book scanning. According to Reuters: The court found against Google after the La Martiniere group, which controls […]
We have covered many of the search ad keyword lawsuits aimed between competitors or directly at the search engines in the past. Nowadays, it seems like a new suit around this topic is filed weekly. Typically these suits go after trademark violations and the like, but a new suit is focusing on a privacy legality. […]
Switzerland is taking Google to court over privacy concerns related to Google’s Street View service. The BBC reports that Swiss privacy official Hanspeter Thuer is leading the country’s case. Mr Thuer is especially concerned about people shown in sensitive locations such as hospitals, prisons or schools. He also said that the height of the camera […]
Right now there’s a court case in Italy that involves Google executives, who are being tried for violating Italian privacy laws. The case illustrates international conflicts of law issues and challenges for companies doing business (via the internet) in multiple nations with differing cultures and corresponding legal rules. In a less serious way Google has […]