Google on Street View pictures: “We are an American company”

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Complaints emerging from pictures taken in Finland for Google’s Street View service are proving to be a difficult issue for Finnish police and data protection officials. The company responded to an inquiry by Finland’s data Protection Ombudsman Reijo Aarnio on Wednesday.
      In its response, Google notes that it has a low threshold for blurring or removing pictures from its service.
     
“With respect to the legal basis , Google noted quite calmly that the service is offered by a company by the name of Google Inc., which is domiciled in the United States”, Aarnio explains.
      He says that one way to interpret this is that Google is asking what guidelines should be applied to the service.
      “It would suggest that Google feels that Finnish law should not apply to it. This brings one additional detail to decision-making.”
     
Aarnio is to decide later how to react to Google’s response. One option for him is to bring the matter before the Data Protection Board, which has the authority of issuing orders on handling personal data.
      Investigating the Street View case is complicated for police as well.
     
The investigation into a complaint made by a man in Raahe has been cumbersome, because it has been very hard to find a specific person who would be responsible for the cause of the complaint, a picture appearing on Google Street View, says Hannu Mensonen, the head of the police investigation.
      The complaint concerns a picture in which a semi-naked man is seen in the yard of his row house. Although his features were blurred, he says that he could be easily identified on the basis of the location.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  NEWS ANALYSIS: Google protected by gap in privacy legislation (15.2.2010)
  Google Street View comes to Finland (10.2.2010)

Links:
  Google Maps with Street View
  Data Protection Ombudsman

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