Privacy fears over Google Earth developments

Researchers in the US have created software that would allow more real-time to be displayed on Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

The software trial at Georgia Tech uses live video feeds that detect motion and position to display realistic animations of humans and moving objects. It showed people playing a soccer game in a park, the speed of traffic on a highway and clouds moving across the sky, and includes simulation that lets the objects move realistically.

But Australian Privacy Foundation chair Roger Clarke told ABC News Online the technology is “grossly privacy-intrusive”.

“The risk of voyeurism in many different forms is enormous here… there’s an awful lot of people who aren’t celebrities who are at potential risk from people who have funny ideas.”

Clarke said there are too many risks for the software, which could collect socially and economically valuable information, to be used in the real world.

Earlier this year, Google told a US court that today’s technological developments make it unrealistic for citizens to expect privacy over their houses or yards.