Street View applies extra blur to Swiss
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Google has agreed to apply extra blurring to faces and number plates on Street View in Switzerland, following some privacy sabre-rattling from the country's head of federal data protection.
Soon after the service went live in Switzerland earlier this month, Hans-Peter Thür ordered it to be shut down on the grounds that "many faces and car registration plates were clearly visible or were insufficiently obscured".
Following a meeting between Thür and the Great Satan of Mountain View, Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, has now promised "significant improvement" in in the blurring.
According to AP, over the next few weeks, Google will first further obscure people's faces - something Fleischer said would subsequently be done in other countries already visited by Street View's all-seeing eye.
In the case of number plates, extra blurring will be applied only in Switzerland, "because the letters and numbers are bigger than on other countries' licence plates", as Fleischer clarified.
Thür has apparently retreated to his data protection bunker to ponder Google's proposals. At time of writing, Swiss Street View is still available, but we'd advise those of you wishing to take a last look at the country's inadequately-blurred burghers to get in there sharpish. ®
COMMENTS
@ravingangryloony
Ah yes, but how does Google treat the reg-plates of Japanese nurses in Switzerland? Or should one not feed the troll?
(untitled)
what a joke...
it really makes my blood boil over this privicy nonsense...
so,,, its like this....
wandering around streetview, you spot a car and can identify a number on a number plate. You fill a form in and send it to DVLA, pay your money and then they will tell you who owns the car. no difrent than what you can do walking down the street yourself....
ok, so if it was in real time, or you can scan for number plates to locate a car... yeah, its a privacy issue as someone could stalk you form the comfort of there computer....
what are the chances of casualy viewing street view and spotting somebody you know driving down the road, or walking down the street.... if they are that bothered, they were proberbly somewhere they should not have been...
I have more issues with the council run street cameras slaping me with tickets for stopping on double yellow lines while i unload my car, and having to go to court to get the fine dropped....
nurses
re: nurse pay. 20-26k (band 5) for a high-stress, shift based hospital nursing job that requires a university degree plus extra certifications? No wonder nurses in the UK are leaving in droves. Only place that seems to pay (and treat) nurses worse is Japan.
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