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@ 2010/08/12Google's Street View is an amazing little utility. Not only can it be used as a tool for obtaining directions or locating various landmarks, it can also serve as the obligatory barrel of laughs, especially if one specifically goes searching for various privacy-related bloopers, like people engaging in some unglamorous activity on public territory.
Of course, the fact that Google's cameras capture just about anything (and anyone) on the street has opened a can of worms. On its part, Google has offered to obscure out sensitive details such as human faces and license plate numbers on a case-by-case basis, but stopped short of actually removing the information from the images. And that was apparently enough to motivate Arturo Flores, a student from the University of California, to write his own software that actually removes people off Street View images.
Of course, the fact that Google's cameras capture just about anything (and anyone) on the street has opened a can of worms. On its part, Google has offered to obscure out sensitive details such as human faces and license plate numbers on a case-by-case basis, but stopped short of actually removing the information from the images. And that was apparently enough to motivate Arturo Flores, a student from the University of California, to write his own software that actually removes people off Street View images.
