I love Europe!

The Europeans are so much more humane, and civilized, than the Americans.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/technology/google17.php
almost five years into its expansion into Europe - where it has a headquarters in Dublin, large facilities in Zurich and London and smaller centers in Denmark, Russia and Poland, among other countries - Google is beginning to bump up against a web of privacy laws

Swiss privacy law prohibits the unauthorized use of personal images or property.
In Germany, where Street View is also not available, the simple process of taking photographs for the service violates privacy laws.

A panel of EU national regulators called the Article 29 Working Party wants Google - as well as Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN Search - to purge the records after six months.

The data protection agency Edõb is also in talks with Google because a Swiss law that took effect Jan. 1 requires all companies in Switzerland that maintain databases on individuals - as Google does - to disclose to the agency how they manage the information.

In Germany, opposition to Street View is more visible. In Kiel, a town on the Baltic Sea coast, data protection officials are threatening Google with fines and are distributing stickers for homeowners to display advising Google's photographers against making pictures of their property for Street View.

"What Google is doing with Street View violates German law," said Marit Hansen, deputy director of the Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz in Schleswig-Holstein, the state in which Kiel is located. "It's not enough that Google's Street View is not yet available in Germany. The simple photographing is in itself a violation."