Small Minnesota Town Tells Google to Take a Hike

streetviews-North Oaks Story.jpg

The city of North Oaks, Minnesota demanded that Google remove images of residents' homes used for the Google Maps Street View feature. Google agreed to the request and all North Oaks' Street Views have vanished. The Street View fight was resolved in January but the Star Tribune recently published a very interesting account on the subject.

While isolated issues have arisen in the past concerning Street View and privacy concerns, most cases have involved individuals or single homes. This is the first time that an entire city has banned Google from taking Street View photos.

From a legal standpoint, Google is allowed take photos from public streets. The streets of North Oaks, however, are privately owned and "the city enforces a trespassing ordinance," according to the Star Tribune. North Oaks Mayor Thomas Watson said "It's not the hoity-toity folks trying to figure out how to keep the world away. They really didn't have any authorization to go on private property."

I used to live in Minnesota and did some business in North Oaks from time to time and I can tell you that, although, it certainly "feels" private, I can see how the Street View cars could have mistakenly missed the "No Trespassing" signs. The St. Paul suburb has a population of about 4500 people and is mostly a heavily-wooded area with large cabin-like homes set back down long driveways, though, so it'd be odd to find yourself simply driving around North Oaks. You'd have to need a reason to be there.

The city sent a letter to Google in January asking that all Street View photos taken in North Oaks be removed and destroyed, a request to which Google complied, according to company spokesperson Elaine Filadelfo, who said that Google "receives a limited number of requests from individuals who don't want their homes displayed on the website" but that she's not aware of any other city in the country that's requested to have all images removed.

North Oaks says that it's simply enforcing its no trespassing laws. The city apparently used to have gates at the various entrances, which were taken down almost 25 years ago. Satellite imagery of North Oaks used in applications like Google Maps and similar mapping services haven't been removed and the city won't ask that it be removed, as Mayor Watson says that no trespassing laws are violated when images are taken from above the city as opposed to driving through it.

Comments

Totally crazy idea. If they don't like the pictures, get them removed. There are a whole pile of Google Street Views that have been censored already:

http://streetviewgallery.corank.com

Mapper99

June 02, 2008

11:38 AM PT