Minnesota says a decisive "no" to Google!

The town North Oaks (North Oaks, MN), a symbol and stronghold of the Midwest USA, yes God bless him, defended his right to identity in the era of computer lawlessness. Photos of this suburb of the capital of Minnesota, consisting of 1,500 private households, a full-fledged private golf course, and several picturesque private hills and lakes, recently appeared on Google Street View. And if the residents of New York or Boston, who happened to be in virtual copies of their megacities, only hope to shake money from the Internet giant for violating the sanctity of privacy, then the proud Nortoxians did not put up with arbitrariness. The collective requirement to erase views of the town from the base was performed by Google without any reservations.

They can, we can not
Moreover, the North Oks case forced the company to reiterate that work is underway on a supplement to the service engine, which will automatically “cover up” the faces of people in the frame. The need for this is difficult to deny: if in the US the likelihood of mass lawsuits against Google for such "misdeeds" is still quite small, in Europe, where the service also soon gets, the laws often explicitly prohibit publishing photos of citizens somewhere without their written permission.

However, at the same time, Google recently confirmed the fact that Street View cars, in addition to taking pictures of streets with digital cameras, also make up a three-dimensional impression of the urban landscape using laser scanning equipment. But we trust Big G, don't we?