A Swiss court has ruled that Google Inc. must guarantee anonymity before publishing faces and license plates in its Street View service in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
A ruling published Monday by the Swiss Federal Administrative Court affects any new ground-level pictures that the popular Internet search engine publishes.<\/p>\n
A court statement said the ruling upholds principles of privacy of control of personal data “regardless of the actual sensitivity of the information in question.”<\/p>\n
Lawyers for Google had told the court that personal privacy was already guaranteed because of technology that automatically blurs faces and car plates, but conceded the service was not foolproof.<\/p>\n
The ruling can be appealed to the Swiss Supreme Federal Court.<\/p>\n
Google agreed in 2009 to temporarily stop uploading new pictures from Swiss cities after the country’s data protection watchdog complained.<\/p>\n