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Camden News - by LIZ BENNETT
Published: 26 March 2009

Bayham Street at the junction of Camden Road, where a man appears to be under arrest

Who’s caught in Google’s web sights?

THIS is Camden – Google-style.
The internet giant’s controversial new Street View service, a photograph of almost every road in London, has captured a day in the life of Camden Town.
The streets are bustling with shoppers enjoying the summer sunshine as the Google-cam makes its mapping mission.
On the corner of Camden Road and Bayham Street – a notorious spot for drug dealing – a man is arrested by a gaggle of police officers.
And on the other side of a market, a man in a suit is so impressed with the Banksy maid stencilled into a wall in Chalk Farm Road, he whips out a camera to take a souvenir. (Good job he got a snap while it lasted). Meanwhile, a tired-looking street cleaner takes a quick break in Inverness Street.
The service, which has been criticised as invasion of privacy, mysteriously runs out in some spots. Only half of Kentish Town Road is covered – same problem in Christchurch Hill, Hampstead.
Many of the leafiest roads in Hampstead are not even offered for view, including streets on which many of the borough’s celebrity names and high profile politicians live.
Other views are slowly disappearing as residents request Google to remove their homes.
A shot of the Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street has already been dumped, possibly to protect patients pictured as they were entering while the Google-mobile passed by.
A similar service run by Camden Council on its website was abandoned two years ago.

‘Google Street View
It’s worse than the paparazzi’

STROLLING through Belsize Park with her shopping bags on a hot summer’s day, Aurora Scott was blissfully unaware she had just been “Googled”, writes Tom Foot.
The mother of two, who works at a nursery in Belsize Park,
was snapped by a Google car outside her front door.
The image has now been published online as part of Google’s controversial “Street View” – a service providing free, crystal-clear panoramic views of roads across the world – which went live on Thursday.
Mrs Scott said: “When I saw it I thought: ‘What a bloody cheek’.
“It’s nobody’s business what I’m doing with my day. No one has asked my permission.”
She added: “It feels like a spy movie. I suppose it’s to do with our celebrity culture – people are dying to know about every detail of everyone’s day. It’s worse than the paparazzi. What will we have next? People snooping through your windows?”
Google has had hundreds of requests for images to be removed from Street View, including pictures of members of the public leaving sex shops or vomiting in the street.

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