New Questions Over Google's Street View in Germany

Google's plan to offer Street View photo mapping in Germany, which has bumped up against the country's strict privacy laws, has come in for renewed criticism after regulators learned that the company, a search engine giant, was also archiving the locations of household wireless networks.

Google's Street View technology has been accepted in countries like Britain and France, but has encountered greater resistance in Germany and Switzerland, where data privacy laws are stricter than in the rest of Europe or in the United States. German data protection officials had initially questioned the legality of Street View but dropped their objections last July after Google agreed to hide details of faces, license plates and house numbersthrough pixilation, and to give citizens the option of removing their property entirely from the 360-degree photo archive. Since then, hundreds have made such requests. Google intends to activate the service in Germany by the end of the year.