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Google was forced to remove a photograph of a naked child from its Street View service last night as a row over internet privacy escalated into one about public safety. The Independent on Sunday alerted the internet search giant after finding the image of the toddler, playing at a family summer picnic in a garden square in north London, captured permanently on the revolutionary mapping system. Britain's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, is considering an investigation into Google if more images of naked children are found to have been picked up by its cameras and made available to internet users.Google has had hundreds of requests for images to be removed since it launched Street View on Thursday, including pictures of members of the public leaving sex shops or vomiting in the street.But the pictures of young children suggest the service could be exploited for more sinister purposes.Last night it also emerged that Tony and Cherie Blair are among hundreds of people who have demanded that close-up photographs of their homes be removed. The Blairs' home in Connaught Square, west London, was blacked out on Friday after nearly 24 hours on the web.Pictures of Downing Street were also taken down, although it is not a private address and the location is photographed by millions of tourists every year.The images of the children were taken last summer and show a typical scene of garden square life in a quiet side-street.The IoS is not naming the address for privacy reasons, but the square is just yards from a Cabinet minister's home, although the children are not related to that minister.The images of the garden square were removed by Google within an hour of the company being informed yesterday. The picture had been found by this newspaper within only 10 minutes, suggesting there could be many similar images on the website.The Tory MP Edward Garnier said: "The right to privacy, and not to become the victim of some corporation's profit-making activities, is clearly something that needs to be protected. We all have an expectation that our privacy should not be invaded or exploited for commercial purposes."A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said: "We will consider the IoS story carefully. Images of children must be properly blurred. If there is an underlying problem, for example if what has been uncovered is systemic, then we will take up the matter with Google."It is Google's responsibility to ensure all images of adults and children are satisfactorily blurred. Individuals who feel that an image does identify them [and are unhappy with this] should contact Google direct to get the image removed."Individuals who have raised concerns with Google about their image being included – and who do not think they have received a satisfactory response – can complain to the ICO."A spokeswoman for Google said last night: "We will remove these pictures as quickly as possible." She insisted that the pictures had been taken on a public road – although the street is not a thoroughfare. "This is still on the side of a public road. It [the camera] takes pictures at any time, and it [records] a fleeting moment."Asked whether Google was concerned that there would be other pictures of children, for example outside schools, the spokeswoman said: "Most of the faces are blurred. If they haven't been, parents can hit a button and remove it [the image]. They show what is going on in the street at a particular moment; they are not live."Google has defended its use of the mapping service, which covers more than 22,000 miles and 25 UK cities, saying that the degree of clarity of the images is no different to those shown in estate agents' literature.By Jane Merrick, Political Editor
To read more go to:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-street-view-forced-to-remove-images-1651311.html
As in the days of Noah...
