Nice use of private roads: Keep Google out

[J’raxis 270145]

A town with private roads using property rights to keep the intel agencies' private partner from photographing their homes:—

North Oaks tells Google Maps: Keep out - we mean it
The St. Paul suburb with private roads may be the first U.S. city to ask that street images be removed.
By LORA PABST, Star Tribune

You can look at almost anything on Google. Just don't try to sneak a peek of the homes in the private community of North Oaks.

The city of 4,500 residents has demanded that Google Maps remove images of North Oaks homes from the website's Street View feature, where any Internet user can glimpse a home from the nearest road.

North Oaks' unique situation, in which the roads are privately owned by the residents and the city enforces a trespassing ordinance, may have made it the first city in the country to request that the online search engine remove images from Google Maps.

"It's not the hoity-toity folks trying to figure out how to keep the world away," said Mayor Thomas Watson. "They really didn't have any authorization to go on private property."

Since the introduction of Google Maps' Street View last spring, the feature has caused controversy in several cities and with the federal government. The Pentagon banned Google Maps from taking any images of military facilities, and a Pittsburgh couple sued the company over images of their home taken from the private road in front of their house.

The North Oaks City Council sent a letter to Google in January asking the company to remove the images and destroy the files or possibly be cited for violating the city's trespassing ordinance.

Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo said the images of North Oaks were removed shortly afterward. She didn't know of any other city in the country that has made a similar request.

"This is very rare where an entire town would request to be taken off," Filadelfo said.

The company receives a limited number of requests from individuals who don't want their homes displayed on the website. All of these images are removed from public view and would never be sold, Filadelfo said.

Violation of city law

North Oaks officials stressed that they needed to enforce the city's law against trespassing, whether it be a motorist who isn't aware of the rules or the Internet search engine behemoth.



HOW TO TAKE YOUR HOME OFF STREET VIEW

• Go to maps.google.com.

• Enter any address and click on "street view."

• Click on "street view help" in the image window.

• Click on "report inappropriate image."

[kola]

cool.