The Daily Tar Heel

Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: City

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Jennifer Anderson didn't expect to see her home pictured online.

But with the Google's expansion of Street View to Chapel Hill, Anderson's home and car now can be viewed by anyone.

"It's kind of creepy," she said. "I saw my car outside my condo, and I didn't like it."

In February, the company added 12 new towns to its Street View feature, including Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.

Google Maps' Street View allows drivers to view a road's surroundings within 360 degrees. Created in May 2007, the images were taken as vehicles with cameras drove the public streets.

"Users can virtually walk the streets of a city and preview destinations like restaurants and hotels before arriving," Elaine Filadelfo, a spokeswoman for Google, said in an e-mail.

Resident Holly Dedmond said it makes driving easier for her.

"I drive with landmarks," she said. "And it's a lot easier to find a street if someone says, 'It's right after the McDonald's' than if they said, 'Take a right on Oak Street.'"

But Anderson said she values her privacy more than driving convenience, adding that she is concerned about the threat to security and safety that Street View poses.

"If that information got into the wrong hands, it could be bad," Anderson said.

Eric Menhart, an attorney at CyberLaw, a Washington, D.C., Internet law firm, said concerns such as Anderson's are common.

"Google actually got a lot of flak about this last year because people were concerned with their privacy," Menhart said.

He said that for complaints such as those, Google, which holds offices in Chapel Hill's Southern Village, added a feature in which one can request to have an image removed.

Individuals can request to have an image taken off the site if the image contains inappropriate content, infringes on one's privacy or presents personal security concerns.

The company has not received many requests yet, Filadelfo said, but she added that Google routinely reviews such requests and acts quickly to remove the imagery.

Menhart said he doesn't think one would have any problems in getting an image removed.

"I suspect that if you had any type of valid complaint, it's going to get removed," he said.

Because the images were taken on public property, Menhart said Street View doesn't constitute an invasion of privacy, even though it creates privacy concerns for many.

"The legal answer to this is if you are in public, you don't really have any expectation of privacy," he said.

But even though the images are months old, Menhart said it also is important to consider that a lot of people probably don't even know they're part of Google Maps.

Despite privacy concerns. Google is expanding Street View imagery to major metropolitans. Ultimately the company would like to have Street View imagery for regions throughout the world, Filadelfo said.

Menhart said that while such a project is legal, Google still should continue to address any ethical issues that might come up.

"It's really an issue of legality versus what's right and appropriate."



Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.

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