Google Street View May Breach EU Law, Officials Say

Google's Street View may break European Union privacy laws, according to data-protection regulators who say the mapping service stores images for too long.

The EU's privacy watchdog said in a Feb. 11 letter to Google that "it is disproportionate to retain unblurred copies of the images for one year," and urged the company to cut the period to six months. Street View, which offers photos of roads and intersections, was introduced in early 2007 in the US and is being rolled out across Europe. Google, which has almost 79 percent of the European search- engine market, according to ComScore Inc., faces growing scrutiny from regulators and competitors in Europe. Two company managers and a former executive were found guilty of privacy violations by an Italian court this week, and three companies have filed antitrust complaints with the EU. Google must cooperate with data-protection agencies and "promptly react to requests for deletion of personal data," Alex Tuerk, president of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party said in the letter. Google also has to "take positive measures to avoid capturing images of a sensitive nature" or those with "intimate details."