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Deutsch: Artikel 29: Reduziert die Lagerzeit der Google Street View-Aufnahmen
Alex Turk, the head of EU Article 29 Working Party (WP) sent a letter on 11 February 2010 asking Google company to warn people about the arrival of its Street View vehicles and to reduce the retention period of unblurred material from one year to six months.
Google has met a series of problems during the last period with its Street View system in Europe being under fire from several EU member states such as Germany, Finland, France as well as non-member states such as Switzerland.
According to a Dow Jones report, the letter sent by WP Article 29 asked Google to notify cities and towns about the arrival of its Street View cars and tricycles by "appropriate announcements in the national, regional and or local press," while Google said it already does this by posting the details on its web site.
Regarding the data storage period, Michael Jones, Google's chief technology advocate and founder of Google Earth, stated the company had negotiated with EU authorities and agreed to one year storage of images from the day they were published on Street View. Therefore, the company believed "the retention of the unblurred images is legitimate and justified".
The company tried to explain why it needed to keep unblurred images (including elements such as faces, licence plates etc.) for a year. "The need to retain the unblurred images is legitimate and justified - to ensure the quality and accuracy of our maps, to improve our ability to rectify mistakes in blurring, as well as to use the data we have collected to build better maps products for our users," said Peter Fleischer, the Google lawyer in charge of privacy issues.
In the meantime, in Germany, Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner had threatened to take legal action in order to prevent Google Street View from offering photos on German cities and streets. But Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Street View application would not be hampered despite the privacy concerns raised by the consumer affairs minister. "Those that consider (Street View) to be an invasion of their private sphere can make use of the right to object," she said in her weekly podcast on 27 February.
In order to address privacy concerns, the German version of Street View will offer residents the possibility to remove pictures before they are published and it will include a tool allowing the quick removal once the images are published. Lena Wagner, a Google Deutschland spokeswoman also stated that the company would announce when its cars would be driving by to take pictures.
Yet, although in February the company stated it would not drop Street View in Europe, in an interview at CeBIT Technology Fair in Hanover that took place between 2-6 March 2010, Jones stated: "I think we would consider whether we want to drive through Europe again, because it would make the expense so draining", which sounded rather like a threat.
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/26/eu_street_view/
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