Numberplates are visible. I watched a van driver driving along the North Circular Road in London, his number plate visible. Near to Brent Cross shopping center in London.

I wonder if the police can use it to prosecute people holding a phone while driving?

What we need is a public facial recognition system, linked to google streetview, that we can use in real time to track everyone. Then use real time adverts on billboards, radio etc, and "personalize" every advert to the customer.

Or just use mobile phone number tracking to send text message adverts to "probable customers".

We could an explosion in this area in the next 10-15 years. Maybe ;-)

"an one imagine going to london with a couple of friends taking pictures of themselves infront of every house in london then posting those pictures on the net. your house will be published on the net. what are you going to do then, blame that person for lotiering outside your house? i dont think so, or you can prosecute for taking a picture outside your property? its a free country, what i do with my camera is my business, its the same for street view. you cant stop it so dont try, your best bet would be to learn to accept the fact your house, car etc is published and you have your little chance of fame =þ have a bit of fun, try using strret view to find wally. that should be interesting. relax people whats done is done, just accept that and let people admire your house, whats the worst that could happen... really what is the worst?"

I don't see whats so hard to understand that if it wasn't google doing this ....there would be severe problems for the persons trying to do it. If the government was doing this it would be unacceptable.

The government does a lot of things without telling you..wiretapping?? ring a bell?? jeez if I am going to just DEAL with google doing this and having no REAL reason other than ...they can. Then I want all of you view lovers to admit that elections in the usa are frauds and that we are a socialists country....not free. Cause what supports street view in your mind is the same support of what I said above about our "government" in the usa.

@ Matt

"You can't really do a search of people on footie coverage can you?"

You can't do a search for people on Street View either numbskull.
If you're SO protective of your house why don't you plant a hedge or build a 6ft wall in front of it?
Do you run outside shouting at anyone who dares to walk past and look in your home's direction.

IT's A STILL IMAGE TAKEN LAST SUMMER FOR FUCKS SAKE!!
It's not live feed from your bedroom.
Wake up, get a life.

Can't wait until Street view covers more of the planet, bring it on!

can one imagine going to london with a couple of friends taking pictures of themselves infront of every house in london then posting those pictures on the net. your house will be published on the net. what are you going to do then, blame that person for lotiering outside your house? i dont think so, or you can prosecute for taking a picture outside your property? its a free country, what i do with my camera is my business, its the same for street view. you cant stop it so dont try, your best bet would be to learn to accept the fact your house, car etc is published and you have your little chance of fame =þ have a bit of fun, try using strret view to find wally. that should be interesting. relax people whats done is done, just accept that and let people admire your house, whats the worst that could happen... really what is the worst?

It seems the gummint would have no choice but to allow such practices since to call it anything less than proper would expose their own monitoring activities to shut down orders. No more street cameras, microphones, traffic light cameras, etc.

We certainly love to see it.

IN USA alot of local city/county governments use Earth view to see if any farmers or rural country folks have built any more buildings on their land so they can jack em up for more tax money for the improvements. This is land they cannot see from the street normally. It already happened to a friend of mine.

I was thinking just that about google earth being a far better tool to use when identifying which house to break into. You can see which fences to jump, who has a huge swimming pool and 4 cars on their huge driveway etc.

So what we really have are 2 groups of people. The twats who are complaining because there is a photo of their house on the internet. And the lesser-twats who are complaing about their faces being on the internet.

Firstly to the twats, stop being such mindless idiots and look at the facts, people are no more likely to break into "your" house because you can see a picture of it on street-view. They "might" be more likely to break in having seen a way in via a sattelite image - go complain about that instead.

To the lesser twats, I can understand your point of view, but again look at reality. Thousands of people have already seen photos of you on the internet via facebook etc, pictures of you in someone elses holiday snaps, your school photos, tv perhaps. People dont care at all, yours is just another boring ugly face in the crowd that people ignore. Start wearing a Niqab - its your only hope.

I have no problems with street view at all. In fact I recently used it before a holiday stateside to see what the hotel looked like from the street. making it a lot easier to find when we got there.

If anything Google Earth gives theives a better chance to scope out your house etc, as it gives them access to areas you cannot see from the road. Things such as back gardens and escape routes over fields, hedges to hide in and the like. This would all be a lot more use to a burgler than a simple view of the front of your house that you get from street view, or simply driving round an area. Are they going to stop all the satelites and aeroplanes now too?

The Information Commissioner judgment has already been found to be flawed in respect of Phorm as the EU is taking the UK Government to court by failing to protect users data.
By not objecting to Google's Street view you are permitting that information to be collected now and in the future. One of the things that Google is good at is Data Aggregation (collecting data and linking it) and Data Mining (extracting information from that data).
For example if your mobile phone movements are linked to Google Streetview, it is possible to visualise exactly where someone has gone.
What future uses Google will use Streetview for is open to speculation.
Unfortunately most of the UK is using an ID card (mobile phone) they just don't realise it.

not their houses. I think it's neat that I can use Google maps to see my house from orbit.

I'd rather not have a picture of me sitting on the Interweb without my consent however.

Ideally, the Google street view stuff would have no people in it at all, just locations. No faces to obscure if there aren't any people.

The example is a bad one, agreed however, will you ban Wrenches because they can be used to kill people? Will you outlaw lock smiths because they can break into your home?

This service has legitimate uses and the information provided is not info that can't be obtained by walking by your house. If they had pictures of inside your house well then fine, if they have a picture of you or your license plate unobscured that a psycho can say "hey that is the guy that cut me off that turn..." and find your house fine.

Reality is its just a house on a map, and if anyone can take one look at your house and say "Oh yeah, I'm gonna rob them" you probably need security cuz guess what, someone could drive by and go "oh yeah, I'm gonna rob them!".

The football match analogy is not even close. By attending the match I'm giving implied consent. I think you'll even find it printed on the back of some of the tickets.

It's another question whether Google have 'implied consent' to take pictures of someone's house on a public road for profit, especially given that Street View's 'profit' is itself implied, i.e. it makes no money itself but drives traffic to Google's other services which most certainly do.

What isn't a question is that clearance was originally given based on the ICO's confidence in Google's automatic face and plate blurring technology. Which, as we have observed so painfully over the past few weeks, quite blatantly just Does Not Work As Advertised.

And it sets a rather dangerous precedent in that any dodgy outfit could now feasibly come along with basically no privacy safeguards whatsoever, and can expect the same clearance from the ICO, on the grounds that their 'privacy technology' works just as well as Google's.

And no, personally I don't think that StreetView should be kicked off the web altogether (so grow up Andy), just that Google should be given a good slapping.

Looks like it might have to be the EU who does that now.

That anyone going to a football match is well aware that they may appear on TV.

You might like it, but a lot of us don't. So, let them publish images of your house, but not mine.

As for liking it to a footie match, is the guy an idiot? You can't really do a search of people on footie coverage can you?

Some sense has found its way into this trivial idiotic obsession with street view being any kind of problem. It is not a problem and never has been, lets hope all of these anti street view dick-ticklers shut up making a fuss about nothing.