In this day and age, one would not expect Britain to be the subject of this story. It is, after all, an industrialized nation. Yet England recently has had a fit of puritanical luddism, exemplified by its ISPs blocking adult content and its residents seeking to deter Google’s street view mapping efforts. With all this in mind, it comes as a very pleasant surprise that the Information Commissioner of the UK, has officially gone on record as saying that citizens should allow Google to photograph the streets of England.
The main complaint that Britons have had is that Google’s obscuring technology does not always work. Street View is supposed to automatically blur faces, which it does quite often, but there have been many instances of individuals’ remaining clearly discernible. So while the Information Commissioner is calling for a “commonsense approach towards Street View,” others, such as Dr. Ian Brown, notes that “it should not be up to individuals to spot breaches of privacy and get them taken down.”
