Google Inc.'s data privacy chief says he's confident Google Street View will be deemed legal in Switzerland ahead of a court hearing later this week.
Peter Fleischer says the service, which allows Internet users to virtually tour locations on a map, is comparable to similar offerings by rivals and meets the country's strict privacy rules.
To produce the service, Google used special vehicles with panoramic cameras to take ground-level, 3-D images. Federal data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer has asked Switzerland's top administrative court to force Google to obscure all faces also caught by the cameras or take the service offline.
The court in Bern will hear both sides' arguments Thursday and likely issue a ruling at a later date.
