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Minnesota Small Town Tells Google - Get Lost!
By Daya Baran at June 01, 2008 1 Comments
A small town of 4,500 residents in Minnesota has told Google that its Street View feature can hit the road, reports CNET. Google’s Street View service displays images of street views from a driver’s perspective.
The private community of North Oaks, states on the city’s Web site, that their roads are privately owned, and a no-trespassing sign greets potential visitors to the city. City officials were “really unhappy” when images of their streets and homes appeared on the Google’s Maps.
The City Council sent Google a letter in January demanding that images be removed or risk being cited for trespassing, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
“It’s not the hoity-toity folks trying to figure out how to keep the world away,” Mayor Thomas Watson told the newspaper. “They really didn’t have any authorization to go on private property.”
In April, a Pittsburgh couple sued Google over photographs of their home that appeared on the company’s site, saying that Google should honor a private road sign on their street. It claims that Google’s “reckless conduct” has “exposed plaintiff’s private information to the public.”
Labels: Maps, street view
One Comment
I can understand their concerns to a point; however their “private information” isn’t private at all with all the satellites that circle the earth taking images of everything. Their public home information is available through many web sites that gather county tax records (zillow.com) and other sites. There is no more privacy and hasn’t been for decades.