The Google street view project, aimed at allowing anyone having access to the search machine the option of viewing places around the world with 3600, street-level imagery, has hit a roadblock in Bangalore. State home minister R Ashoka said on Monday that action would be taken to bar Google from filming for the project in Bangalore.
Ashoka, who earlier received a communiqué from the BJP communication cell, said, “The police have stopped street view. We will take the necessary action to stop Google’s filming.”
Ashoka was attempting to assure his listeners that the security of the state capital would not be compromised. He added that a final decision in the matter would be taken after studying all the pros and cons.
Earlier, the chairman of the BJP communication cell, Channamallikarjuna, BJP MLA BN Vijaykumar and media in-charge of the party S Prakash had submitted a memorandum demanding that the home minister disallow Google from filming city streets.
“Bangalore is an international hub for information technology. It has several sensitive space research and defence establishments, like Isro, HAL, NAL and GTRE. Many of these are on the terrorists’ radar. If Google makes streetwise information easily available, it could aid terrorist outfits in planning terror operations. This has already been proven in other nations,” the BJP delegation said.
The delegation added that China had already banned Google, because there were suspicions that some of its operations were conducted at the instance of the CIA.
For Germans, it’s privacy issue
Among those most vigorously opposing Google street view were Germans, too concerned for their privacy to allow Google’s cameras to roll at will down their streets. In Australia and the US, however, Google street view operations were conducted smoothly.
Google had been working with a year-end deadline to get the whole system up and running, but with so many protests, that deadline might be hard to meet.
