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Microsoft has taken its Google Street View-like service BingStreetside offline in Germany after German citizens expressed theirworries about how Microsoft handles requests for blurring ofimages, the company said on Tuesday. All German panorama photos were made inaccessible as a precautionwhile Microsoft evaluates the complaints and contemplates asolution, the company said in a statement. Microsoft spokesman Thomas Baumgärtner said he could notpredict when or if the service will be reinstated. The complaintswere limited and were not initiated by a data protection agency, hesaid. "These are single incidents," he said, without disclosing how manycomplaints Microsoft received. Microsoft started photographing German streets in May last year andso far published Streetside photos of 31 cities and areas,including Berlin, Düsseldorf and Munich, according to acompany overview published on March 1. Another 21 locations are scheduled to bephotographed during 2012. Elsewhere, Microsoft has publishedStreetside views of parts of the U.S. and of the regions aroundParis and Marseille in France, and around London, Liverpool,Manchester, Bristol and Coventry in England. Microsoft is continuing the scheduled photographing as normal,Baumgärtner said. The first Streetside photos were made available online at the endof December, after a period during which Germans could oppose thepublication of photos of their houses, according to the Bavarian data protection agency. The preliminary objectionperiod ran from August until September. Microsoft committed itself to automatically blur license plates,faces, violence and nudity in Streetside pictures, the company saidwhen it announced the service. Houses were not automatically madeunrecognizable because Microsoft said that, in their view, this isnot personal data. The company received few complaints by the endof the preliminary objection period, it said at the time. After the deadline had passed it was still possible to complainabout photographs showing houses by clicking on a button providedin each panoramic Streetside view. It was also possible to file awritten complaint using a form posted to a Microsoft Streetside information portal , or complain by sending a letter to Microsoft, the data protectionauthority said. Any individual who feels disturbed by the publication of his houseon the Internet has the right to object the publication, said thedata protection agency in Bavaria. The filed objections can not bejustified, and Microsoft has to blur every house that is flagged,it added. Microsoft is not the only company that struggles to comply withGerman privacy concerns. Google had similar problems with its Street View service that showsphotographs of German streets in a very similar way to Streetside.One of the concerns was related to the storage of unblurred imageson Google's servers. While Google automatically renders part ofStreet View images unrecognizable it said it needed to retain theoriginal photographs to perfect its automatic blurring technology.Google later agreed to delete the raw images from its internal database within two months ofreceiving a request. Google Street View coverage in Germany -- a dozen cities plus theCologne-Essen agglomeration -- lags behind that in neighboringcountries such as Denmark, France and the Netherlands, wherecoverage is almost nationwide. In addition to inviting Germans toobject to images before publication, the company is also obliged topublicize the dates and routes on which its Street View cars willbe gathering data in Germany. Loek covers all things tech for the IDG News Service. Follow him onTwitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Pixim Cameras , PTZ Speed Dome Camera Manufacturer, and more. For more , please visit IR IP Cameras today!
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