Google Street View cars arrive on Wirral amid privacy fears

Aug 26 2009 by Richard Down, Bromborough and Bebington News

GOOGLE Street View, the pioneering eye-level mapping project, has arrived on Wirral amid invasion of privacy fears.

A pair of Google cars were spotted by the Wirral News at Bromborough Croft retail park on Monday.

The internet giant is trying to produce a street-level map of the entire planet allowing billions of web users to see a snapshot of homes and even the odd passer-by.

Fears surrounding personal privacy have been raised as a result of the scheme that, until now, has been confined to the USA.

The camera pods on top of the black Vauxhall Corsas have already spent a week mapping the streets of Ellesmere Port and this week are working their way across the peninsular from Eastham to Heswall.

The cars are equipped with a bank of cameras, able to take 360º photos while travelling at a normal speed.

A GPS receiver matches each photo with a geographical location, and a laptop which sits on the passenger seat beams the information back to a central control location that helps to check the quality of the images and control the basic setup of the equipment.

All the images are sent back to Zurich immediately and only rain can interfere with their progress.

Lesley McGoldrick, a solicitor with DLA Piper’s Technology, Media and Commercial team said the scheme threw up privacy issues. She said: “Data protection laws will raise issues relating to how Google is taking images and whether the public in a particular area are aware of what Google is doing and how their images may be used.”

Police have received no complaints.