The folk of Broughton don’t take kindly to being photographed without permission. So when Google sent one of its specially equipped cars to take pictures of the village for its Street View feature, residents swung into action. They stopped the car, called the police and quizzed the driver for hours.

Suspicions are being raised across Europe as Google proceeds with its project to document Earth at ground level. Through Street View, Google offers 360-degree images of roads and buildings.

Privacy concerns, however, have delayed the program’s launch in European countries where stricter laws on privacy apply than in the US. In May, Greece’s privacy watchdog ordered Google to stop collecting images until it satisfied questions on how long the information would be stored. Last month, Switzerland put a check on Street View after a short-lived debut. Swiss authorities told Google to take the feature off-line until certain conditions could be met, including better blurring of faces of bystanders caught on camera.

The issues raised in Switzerland echo those elsewhere: people’s fears of being photographed in embarrassing circumstances and of not knowing how published images might be used by strangers.

In one image, a married Swiss politician was photographed with a blond who was not his wife, which forced him to explain publicly that the woman was his secretary. “Imagine that someone is photographed as they just happen to walk past a sex shop, or if someone enters a hospital,” Hanspeter Thuer, the Swiss federal data-protection commissioner, said.

Google says Street View, launched in 2007, breaches no laws. It recently announced that it was adding Portugal and Taiwan to its list. However, the Pentagon forbade photos of US military bases.

... contd.