Google's Street View may break Canadian law

You may recall my earlier post about Google's new Street View. At the time of this writing, Street View is available in nine American cities. In an effort to satisfy privacy advocates and critics, Google is now allowing anyone to report identifiable faces, license plates, etc., which Google will then zap. However, Canadian privacy law may not be satisfied by the "zap process."

Canada's 2004 personal information protection act states that businesses wishing to disclose personal information about individuals to first obtain their consent. According to Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, Google's images are clear enough to be considered personal information.

"The images ... appear to have been collected largely without the consent and knowledge of the individuals who appear in the images," wrote Stoddart.

"I am concerned that, if the Street View application were deployed in Canada, it might not comply with our federal privacy legislation. In particular, it does not appear to meet the basic requirements of (the law)."

As they indicated when dealing with China, Google said the company abides by the local laws of the countries it operates in. Although Street View has not launched in Canada yet, the Privacy Commissioner's office wanted to get ahead of the game by bringing up its concerns before the fact, so that they could negotiate with Google.