While most privacy right groups are focusing their criticism at Google and its Streetview product many other applications as 360 cities or Herold 360′ Straßentour and of course Bing Maps offer similar functions and remain mainly unnoticed.
As an example please take a look at the 16 Gigapixel panorama-photo of Prague and feel free to zoom in at any person you see. Contrary to Google and Herold, 360 Cities hasn’t even blurred the faces of the people the pictures (e.g. here).
Concerning the neverending Streetview Discussion I’d like to add an issue from the recent Security 09 symposium hosted by the e-center in Vienna: During a discussion Dennis Schultz (Google Inc.) pointed out that in a historic city such as Vienna the people actually living IN the houses (owners, tentants) are constantly changing, while the outside of the houses remain pretty much the same. Schultz went on to say that Google Streetview is mainly interested in streets& houses and that humans are actually disturbing Google Streeetview as the service is only interested in the (non-human) streetview.
Isn’t that an interesting and at the same time also a somehow quite ironic/amusing point?
A perfect example is of the man seen on this picture masturbating, honestly, he can clearly be seen seated in a room window.
Click into the “16 Gigapixel panorama-photo of Prague” link in the article above. Use the field of view pionter at the top right to bring the field of view to point northwards, actually ever so slightly to the west of north.
At the bottom of the view is a row of flats and you can see the red rooves which is the first line of rooves in the field. There is a inset balcony in that line of rooves along the bottom of the picture to the left of botton centre.
Zooom in on the inset balcony as its the easiest reference point, but as you do so spot the man seated in the window below.