Overzealous Steet View

After Google launched their new Street View service for several UK cities yesterday, it has been all over the press today that some compromising images have slipped through.

Google had assured the Information Commissioner that they could apply a complex imaging algorithm to their millions of captured images to recognise and blur-out faces and number plates. It seems that this algorithm can be over-active as well as missing the odd face. Take this image which I grabbed from a Street View scene in Edinburgh earlier today. It a view of the Queen's Gallery, outside the Palace of Holyrood House, opposite the Scottish Parliament building. You can see that Google have helpfully blurred the face of who I assume is Mary Queen of Scots (although, of course, it's hard to tell) on the poster hanging from the wall.

I have to say that I am impressed with Street View, and I'm sure I will be using it but I do find it ironic that they can immediately protect the privacy of poster subjects, pub signs and statuary all over the country but not people vomiting in the street or walking out of sex shops. Go fig.