Considering Google’s (News - Alert) tendency of wanting to be recognized everywhere, this comes as a bit of a surprise to me. Street View in Google Maps lets you explore places around the world through 360 degree views with, as the name implies, street view imagery.

Google Street View imagery is viewed millions of times each day. It was created to enable users to explore places near and far in Google Maps and Google Earth. If you manage a unique property, such as a park, pedestrian mall, or university campus, you can request for the Street View team to visit your location.

However, there is a huge difference between inviting the Google Street View car to drive around your location if you made a request, and having it just show up to take images that it will publish on a global level. It would appear that Italy feels there is a big difference between the two scenarios.

According to a report by Reuters (News - Alert), Google has paid a fine imposed by Italy’s data protection watchdog, to the amount of €1 million, or roughly $1.4 million. This is not a new complaint, however, as the incident happened in 2010. It revolves around the fact that Google used cars that were not clearly recognizable as Street View vehicles.

Below are two images of Google Street View cars. The question that I have is if you have gone through the trouble to create a car with a rather extensive camera system on the roof and painted to reflect exactly what it is, why would you use an unmarked car? Check out the two vehicles and what the camera itself looks like.

The Italian watchdog said it received many complaints about the privacy infringement of Google’s Street View cars. Last week it said that it had imposed a fine of $1.4 million on Google and the company paid the fine.

It had also stipulated that Google must to publicize the locations its cars would be visiting ahead of time, on its website and in local news media. This way Italians could choose to avoid the risk of being photographed.

In a statement, the Italian watchdog said, “Cars belonging to the giant of Mountain View roamed Italy's streets without being entirely recognizable as such, therefore not allowing the people present in those places to decide whether to be photographed or not."

Google’s response was, "The fine from the DPA relates to an old case that dates back to 2010. We complied with everything the (regulator) required of us at the time." While this particular case does go back several years, Google has faced more than a few privacy lawsuits, not only in Europe but in the U.S. as well.

It would appear that Street View has quite the reputation of getting Google into legal trouble. CNET mentions that the company has been hit by numerous lawsuits throughout the world over complaints that Street View violates the privacy of local citizens.

Google response to these types of complaints comes in the form of blurring images of people, homes, buildings and license plates, among other measures. I for one do not like having my picture taken, which is especially difficult for me because I live in Little Italy and am constantly surrounded by tourists taking pictures non-stop!

However, Google’s problems don’t just stop with unmarked cars. It seems that Street View also had a habit of being able to capture “fragments” of electronic communications as part of its mapping research in Italy.

Google has previously been fined in other parts of Europe on privacy grounds. Last April, Google was fined around $190,000 in Germany over similar Street View privacy concerns relating to the harvesting of additional data such as Wi-Fi passwords. Google was fined around $200,000 in France in January for privacy infringements. Spain also levied a $1.3 million fine back in December for the same issue.

Not to be left out, in September 2013 a U.S. federal appeals court rejected Google's bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of violating federal wiretap law when it accidentally collected personal data while building Street View. How many times can you accidently collect personal data that includes passwords? Surely after several million dollars’ worth of lawsuits, over a number of years, the process can be refined to not collect such information. Or does Google have something else in mind for gathering it?