California State Assemblyman Joel Anderson has introduced a bill to limit the amount of detail users can see in images provided by online mapping tools. Bill AB-225 also calls for fines of up to (US)$250,000 per day for violators.

The key provisions of the bill state:

An operator of a commercial Internet Web site or online service that makes a virtual globe browser available to members of the public shall not provide aerial or satellite photographs or imagery of a building or facility in this state that is identified on the Internet Web site by the operator as a school or place of worship, or a government or medical building or facility, unless those photographs or images have been blurred. …

An operator of a commercial Internet Web site or online service that makes a virtual globe browser available to members of the public shall not provide street view photographs or images of the buildings and facilities described in subdivision (a).

The Bill is clearly aimed at Google Earth, though it does not refer to the Google sevice by name. Google is the only online operator that currently ‘makes a virtual globe browser available to members of the public’.

Google Earth has come under fire a number of times, in jurisdictions around the globe, in the past year for what complaining parties call egregious invasions of their privacy, not only by Google Earth images but by Google Street Views images of their neighbourhoods and homes. And, sometimes, even of themselves.

The online industry seems to see Anderson’s initiative, to effectively blur Google’s images, as a crackpot scheme that won’t succeed. But Anderson points out that other jurisdictions, including a national effort in India, are launching similar initiatives, ostensibly to thwart terrorism by denying terrorists clear pictures of their potential targets.

Google already cooperates with U.S. military and law enforcement agencies by blurring out, or excluding entirely, satellite images of locations deemed sensitive.