Kingdom of Belgium plans to sue Google over the tech colossus ’s refusal to blur sensitive military sites and atomic business leader plants on the companionship ’s various mapping platforms . Military leaders in Belgium have not yet file away a formal complaint but confirmed to Reuters that theyintend to litigate .
“ It ’s a shame the Belgium Department of Defense have decided to take this decision . We have been working closely with them for more than two geezerhood , reach changes to our map where ask and legal under Belgian law . We be after to continue work with them in that purport of cooperation , ” Michiel Sallaets , Google ’s spokesperson in Belgium , told Gizmodo in a statement via email .
The platforms at issue are Google Earth , Google Maps , and Street View — all of which rely on elements of third - political party mental imagery , which looks like the crux of Google ’s pushback . In short , Google would have to alter icon that they ’re receiving from other technology companies that do satellite imaging . Google turn away to do that for reasons still nameless .
The fragile government issue surrounding privacy and mathematical function software are n’t new . American law mostly finds that citizens do n’t have an expectation of secrecy from anything that can be seen from the street — a monetary standard largely upheld in state courts . But European laws are unlike , and nation on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean generally have stricter law regarding technical school and seclusion .
The only American municipalities that have successfully kept Google ’s mathematical function services at bay have been cities with individual road . The roads of North Oaks , Minnesota are see individual property and successfully got Street View images taken downin 2008because Google ’s vehicles were regard to be “ trespassing . ”
But Google is also eager to work with nation and militaries to protect their tender data if the only alternative is being abnegate access to their market . China is perhaps the most gamey - profile example . Google is reportedly work on acensored search enginefor the nation of almost 1.4 billion people . Some see this as a compromise of its supposed commitment to the ideals of free republic and freedom of actor’s line . But when you ’re talk about acquiring massive amounts of money , Google has shown that it is n’t go bad to have gamey - minded ideals get in the room .
[ Reuters ]
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