Reuters reports
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE55I38C20090619

<< Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google's online photo map service, police said.

The pair stole the 14-year-old boy's mobile phone and 165 euros ($230) in cash last September.

"The picture was taken just a moment before the crime," a police spokesman said.

In March, the victim recognized himself and the two robbers while surfing Google Maps, which has a "Street View" feature allowing users to see images of buildings. The images are usually taken by a camera mounted on a car.

After an investigation by the police, one of the 24-year-old twins confessed to robbing the boy. >>

if this story took place in Germany, the two brothers would have censored the images before publication... And no one would know about it.

Tom, imagery showing yourself can be removed in other countries too, just that it will be kept internally within Google...

Pics:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/19/street_view_mugging/

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Merwedestraat+Groningen&sll=52.077218,5.110949&sspn=0.003693,0.007435&ie=UTF8&ll=53.205493,6.567743&spn=0.007197,0.01487&z=16&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=53.205572,6.567687&panoid=WV0HXa-HYJkv-p79zMmASw&cbp=12,183.96,,1,12.75

http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/06/19/street_view_mugging.jpg

Philipp : in other countries, pictures can't be removed BEFORE publication.

> in other countries, pictures can't be
> removed BEFORE publication.

But that would not have made a difference here, right – the person in question who reported this to the police only found himself on Google Maps after publication. The muggers could not have asked to have their pics removed before publication even in Germany, unless perhaps it's their own house where they mugged the person. And after publication, both in Germany and other countries, the muggers could have been successful in removing the imagery (arguing they don't want to show or something).

I think it might be fake news story.

From @scjm url of the streetview, you see the kid on the bike together with the 'muggers' during the whole drive through the street. He is not passing them by, and got mugged, but was actually joining them walking/biking down the street. "recognized himself and the two robbers" so it would make sense to assume it's him on the bike.

Or option b) the kid on the bike in the picture was not robbed, but someone else.

I live in the Netherlands, and this story made it to the 20:00-journal on all channels. The story is true, but the crime itself isn't captured by Google, only the few minutes before. But the images were important, because they didn't know who committed the crime.

The guy who was robbed only saw the censored version of the pictures on Google Maps. He contacted the police. The Dutch police contacted Google USA, to get the original, uncensored, versions of this pictures.

One of the investigating agents recognised one of the robber's faces, because he committed a crime before, and the other robber was a brother of the first robber.

Thanks Andries, that's interesting – so Google blurred the faces but then handed out the unblurred raw material upon being asked by authorities. I added an update.

Philipp : so in Germany you can remove pics of your house, but not pics of you? :-o

Tom, in Germany I would think you can remove pics of: your house or house number, you (where your face shows), and perhaps your license plate, but you would need to ask Google for details, I don't know exactly. Again, one of the main differences in Germany is supposed to be that Google will delete their internal representation of the imagery too when the public image is removed, something they don't do in other countries. If Street View rolls out to many other countries, and the police can just ask Google for detailed images that don't publicly show on their site, this has very crucial consequences – e.g. imagine a country which has strict regulations of demonstrations, and that country then requesting unblurred imagery of protesters who went out on the street to demonstrate for more democracy.

the complete sequence

http://www.corriere.it/gallery/Cronache/vuoto.shtml?2009/06_Giugno/google/1&1

On a related note, this article below says that Google might, in the long term, delete all unblurred imagery for Europe (not just in Germany, and not just upon request):

Google's Peter Fleischer is quoted to have said, "We've communicated to the Article 29 Working Party that we will meet their request that long term we only keep the blurred copy of Street View panoramas, and we will work with them and our engineers to determine the shortest retention period that also allows for legitimate use under EU laws".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/16/google_street_view_source_deletion/

The person on the bike is visible, with no apparent "blurring" having been performed against that portion of the image, in a reflection in a window. As a reflection however, its quality is already and probably sufficiently degraded. I suppose however, that distinction is the domain of the bicyclist and the other individual whose reflections are visible.