Swiss Demand Google Shut Down Street View

Google's Street View Switzerland went online last week, and already authorities are demanding they shut it down, citing privacy issues.

The Swiss like their privacy; after all, just think of the tight-lipped security on those Swiss bank accounts. But in what must be a record, the head of the country’s federal data protection is demanding Google shut down Street View Switzerland, less than a week since it went live.

Hans-Peter Thür, head of data protection, claimed that "many faces and car registration plates were clearly visible or were insufficiently obscured," and last Friday told Google they had to yank the offending images until the face-blurring software was working properly.

Matthias Meyer from Google Switzerland admitted that the software had some problems:

"Our face and licence plate blurring software is very effective, but like any new technology it still makes mistakes now and then – occasionally blurring things that shouldn’t be blurred, or missing some things that should.

"We’re constantly working to improve the software so that we can improve the blurring we apply to images, and to do this we need to keep the original unblurred copies."

The two sides are meeting this week to try and resolve the issue.