Google Street View Japan Responds to Privacy Concerns
The refilming of Japan by the Google Street View team has begun and media reports say that the camera is about 40 centimeters lower this time. The new height for the camera is 205 centimeters from ground level.
The camera’s height reduction could be in response to people complaining that the Google Street View Car’s camera was high enough to see over walls they’d put up to prevent passers by from seeing in.
Google is also giving people the chance to have their residences or their address and name plates blurred or deleted from Google Street View, and have iven set up telephone lines so that people who are not used to the internet can call in and request exclusion from Street View.
Here is the page Google provides with information on how to be removed or blurred in Street View Japan.
I just want to add an update here. I published this post back on May 13th when I read it on a Google official site. Now I see a lot of posts in various places with the same title that says Google was “forced” to refilm all of Japan. I think this is grossly inaccurate. I really believe Google is trying to get the best shots it can, improve user experience, and keep a good relationship with the people of Japan. It can do all of this by refilming with a camera set 40cm lower. I haven’t seen anything in Japanese or English that seems to emply that Google was in any way “forced” to do this. I think the use of the term “forced” is something akin to wishful thinking in some case, and in other cases, just blindly believing one site, while still others simply lack knowledge of Japan.