Google's Street View back in privacy activists' sights

(BRUSSELS) - Google's controversial Street View application, which allows web users to peek up close in cities worldwide, has come under fresh attack from privacy campaigners.

The software, based on photographs which create 3-D imagery allowing surfers to 'walk' through streets the streets of New York, Paris or Hong Kong, already blurs out faces of passers-by or car registration plates.

However, in a letter seen by AFP on Friday, a group of privacy campaigners demand that Google -- firmly in European Union regulators' sights over a host of issues -- publicise the arrival of their photographers and reduce the time they hold the data, "not only through the website."

The company says it has to hold the unblurred data long enough to correct errors that can emerge through the touch-up technique.

The campaigners, based in Paris, "emphasise the importance of advance notification" and "believes that a maximum retention of six months," as opposed to the current 12, is appropriate for the imagery.

But Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, insisted in an emailed response that "we have publicly committed to a retention period of 12 months from the date on which images are published on Street View, and this is the period which we will continue to meet globally."

Google did not address the issue of notifying locals.

The new EU commissioner responsible for digital issues, Viviane Reding, recently announced plans to update EU data privacy laws, which date from 1995, to bring them into line with the internet age.