Swiss privacy
May 11, 2011
On Wednesday, Google said it would appeal a ruling by the Swiss Federal Administrative Court, which found last month that Google had not made a sufficient effort to blur cars' license plates or people's faces as part of its Street View service.
The case will now be referred to the Federal Court in Lausanne, Switzerland's highest appeals court.
In a statement provided to SDA, a Swiss news agency, Hanspeter Thür, the data-protection commissioner for Switzerland, said on Wednesday he was confident the original ruling would be upheld. He added that he hoped this finally would put the issue of Street View in Switzerland to rest.
On Thursday, Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, said it would be impossible for his company to follow the previous ruling.
"We simply cannot comply with the current terms of the court," he said, in a call with reporters. "If the ruling is not amended, we will not have any choice but to pull Google Street View services from Switzerland."
An English-language statement released on the Federal Administrative Court's website in April said Google must "make all faces and number plates unrecognizable before the pictures can be published on the Internet."
Google is able to blur about 98 percent of people's faces using an automated algorithm.
"If we wanted to achieve 100 percent deletion of faces and features, we would have to check every single one of the millions of Swiss pictures manually," Fleischer said on Wednesday, in a statement also provided to SDA. And that, he argued, would put an impossible burden on the California company.
Swiss officials unmoved
However, this is inadequate, according to Thür, who announced in November 2009 that he would take Google to court for flouting the country's privacy laws.
According to the April ruling, Google must ensure that every face and license plate photographed in Switzerland is rendered anonymous, even if the company must do so manually. In addition, the ruling stated that Google must provide much better warning of scheduled Street View photography times.
Street View has met with various legal challenges amid its expansion in Europe. In March a Berlin state court ruled the service was legal, while in September 2010, the Czech Republic data-protection authorities denied Google's latest application to take new Street View photographs.
Author: Cyrus Farivar (sda)
Editor: Jennifer Abramsohn