| alex.w *// | 10-07-2009 09:15 AM |
Google Street View goes live in vancouver and Canadian cities
Quote:
Google Street View, a feature of Google Maps that shows high-resolution street-level images on the internet, has gone live in several Canadian cities.
The service is now available in Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, Vancouver, Squamish, B.C., Whistler, B.C., Ottawa, Kitchener, Ont., and Waterloo, Ont.
The service, which is already available in cities in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Australia, Japan and several other countries, provides close-up, 360-degree views of city streets as they would be seen by someone driving along them. The images are linked to the company's Google Maps and Google Earth applications.
Google has been filming Street View images in Canadian cities since 2007. In addition to the 11 cities where the service is now live, Google says its camera-cars have been filming in Edmonton, Saint John, N.B., Saskatoon and Winnipeg.
Google has tried to address the privacy concerns of Street View brought up by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada by adding privacy features to the service, including the automatic blurring of faces and licence plates to avoid identifying people or cars, and an easy method to request to have images removed.
A street view service provided by another company already exists in Canada. That service, which includes images of Vancouver, Whistler and Squamish, was launched by another company, Vancouver-based Canpages Inc., in March.
However, B.C. falls outside the jurisdiction of the federal privacy commissioner as its provincial laws are very similar to federal laws and take precedence within B.C.
If Canpages expands its imagery to other provinces, as it has said it intends to, then federal assistant privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham's office would have jurisdiction, she confirmed. However, so far, the company has not contacted the federal privacy commissioner.
Google Street View was launched in the U.S. in May 2007. Four months later, privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart warned the service might not comply with federal privacy legislation, as it included images of identifiable people that had been collected without their consent.
| images are very clear! check it out |
