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June 8, 2012

Google Wins Partial Swiss Privacy Ruling

By MARTA FALCONI

ZURICH--Google Inc. scored a victory Friday that will allow it to continue to offer its popular Street View application in Switzerland, capping a lengthy legal battle in the country and marking the latest step in a global controversy that put the Internet giant's alleged privacy violations into the spotlight.

Laws to protect personal data are among the world's strictest in Switzerland, where Google set up its engineering headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But the company faced opposition to its mapping service in several European countries. In Germany, Google allowed residents to opt out of Street View before the product launched; in the Czech Republic, where Google has only completed Street View mapping for Prague, it publishes only blurred images of individuals photographed there.

Switzerland's highest court ruled that Google can't be forced to fully blur all images of faces and license plates appearing on the mapping service, partially upholding an earlier appeal by Google. A lower court last year backed Switzerland's privacy watchdog in finding that the software infringed on privacy because it only renders 99% of individuals' faces and plates unidentifiable. The earlier ruling forced Google, which launched Street View in the country in 2009, to blur out every face that appears on the service. Google had argued that the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commission's demands for faces to be manually blurred out were financially and logistically unfeasible, and threatened to pull Street View from Switzerland.

The case highlights concern about protecting individuals' privacy and the struggle by regulators to strike the right balance between privacy rights and Street View, which provides 360-degree images of city streets and is used by millions while searching Google Maps.

The Lausanne, Switzerland, court said the remaining 1% of the uploaded images must be manually blurred if people identified on the images complain to Google and called on the company to make it easier for those affected to lodge complaints.

Also, the court said that images taken near schools, hospitals, homes for the elderly, women's shelters, courts and prisons must be completely blurred out.

Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel at Google, welcomed Friday's decision.

"We're pleased the Swiss court has upheld a key part of our appeal, acknowledging that we have strong privacy controls in Street View, like automatic blurring of faces and license plates. We're now reviewing the decision in full as we consider our next steps," he said.

Eliane Schmid, a spokeswoman for Switzerland's privacy watchdog, praised Friday's ruling for calling for increased transparency and urging Google to continually improve the Street View software.

"We are satisfied with a decision that supported our main positions," Ms. Schmid said in a telephone interview.

The Street View project sent hundreds of camera-equipped vehicles to photograph locations around the world. In 2010, the company disclosed that data such as emails and Internet search histories from unprotected Wi-Fi networks within range of the vehicles had been inadvertently collected. Since then, the company has faced scrutiny from foreign governments as well as U.S. state attorneys general, though so far it hasn't faced major penalties. Google was fined for allegedly violating privacy laws and has agreed to audits of its privacy practices.

U.S. and European regulators are now investigating how Google bypassed the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple Inc.'s Safari Web browser. In that instance, Google used special computer code to install tracking files. Google says it has removed such "cookies" and never collected personal data.

--Leos Rousek and Sean Carney in Prague contributed to this article.

Write to Marta Falconi at marta.falconi@dowjones.com