Google Earth starts filming Merseyside

Jul 22 2008 Exclusive by Richard Down, Liverpool Daily Post

GOOGLE Street View, the pioneering eye level mapping project, has arrived on Merseyside amid invasion of privacy fears.

The internet giant is trying to produce a street level map of the entire planet allowing billions of web users to see a snapshot of homes and even the odd, accidental passer-by.

Fears surrounding personal privacy have been raised as a result of the scheme that, up to now, has been confined to the USA.

But the Daily Post has spotted a Google Earth car in Old Hall Street, opposite Moorfields station.

The camera pod on top of a black Vauxhall Corsa, was capturing images for the second day in Merseyside.

The cars are equipped with a bank of cameras, able to take 360º photos while travelling at a normal speed.

A GPS receiver matches each photo with a geographical location, and a laptop which sits on the passenger seat beams the information back to a central control location that helps to check the quality of the images and control the basic setup of the equipment.

John Gallagher, manager of Kelly Services Liverpool, is helping co-ordinate the mapping of the city region.

He said work had begun in the early hours of last Monday and was likely to continue for several weeks to build a complete picture.

“All the images are sent back to Zurich immediately and then they tell us to take them again, or whatever,” he said.

“We’ve been onto some estates in Liverpool where people have asked us ‘what’s going on?’.”

He said people who had spotted the car had mistaken them for police and there had been some level of mistrust.

People across the country have spotted similar vehicles, but Google is not releasing any details about when or where they intend to map next.

Lesley McGoldrick, a Liverpool- based solicitor with DLA Piper’s Technology, Media and Commercial team said the scheme threw up privacy issues.

She said: “Data protection laws will raise issues relating to how Google is taking images and whether the public in a particular area are aware of what Google is doing and how their images may be used.

“If images are being taken without an individual’s knowledge and they can be identified from that image, or the image shows the individual doing something unusual, then such practices could be unfair unless that individual’s consent has been obtained to use their image.

“Google has promised to obey local privacy legislation, but lawyers have warned that British data protection laws could make Street View’s eventual launch in the UK a legal minefield.”

Merseyside Police has as yet received no complaints, and said the issue was too vague to address at present.

richarddown@dailypost.co.uk