EU warns Google over Street View

Company tests face-blurring feature as regulators turn up the heat

European Union regulators have warned Google that its controversial Street View application could contravene EU privacy laws.

EU data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx told reporters that Street View should not be allowed to display photos of citizens on the site.

"Making pictures [available] everywhere is certainly going to create some problems," said Hustinx.

Street View allows users to navigate Google Maps using actual photos of streets taken by vehicle-mounted cameras.

The service generated controversy when it was found that the photos often displayed individuals on the street and inside buildings.

Street View is protected from litigation under US laws, although Google allows homeowners to request that photos of their dwellings be taken down from the service.

Google was sued earlier this year by a Pennsylvania couple who found pictures of their home on Street View.

Even before Hustinx made the comment to reporters, Google said that it had already begun testing a new feature which will blur individual faces.

Google software engineer Andrea Frome said in a blog posting that the blurring feature was already being tested on a set of street images taken in New York.

"This effort has been a year in the making. Working at Street View scale is a tough challenge that required state-of-the-art automatic face detection," she said.

"We continue working hard to improve [the technology] as we roll it out for our existing and future imagery."