[translated with Google Translate]
After a detailed review of Google Street View, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Hanspeter Thür believes that, despite additional measures proposed by Google Inc.., Protection of privacy is not completely guaranteed. It has therefore made recommendations to Google Inc. who has thirty days to take a stand.
[...]
The FDPIC maintains complete anonymity that faces and license plates of vehicles is necessary to ensure respect for privacy. It requires in its recommendation of September 11, 2009 Google:
   * develop a better way to make faces and number plates completely unrecognizable,
   * brings attention to the anonymization of sensitive facilities such as hospitals, schools or prisons,
   * erase the images of private streets taken without consent,
   * eliminates the images of enclosed spaces (courtyards, gardens) and decreases in the future height of mounting cameras
   * inform the affected towns and villages a week before carrying out the shooting and one week before being placed online
   * does not publish new images taken in Switzerland until legal issues have been clarified.

Google Inc. is invited to provide the FDPIC within 30 days whether to accept the recommendation. If it rejects the recommendation or does not meet the FDPIC may refer the matter to the Federal Administrative Court for decision.

In French: http://www.edoeb.admin.ch/aktuell/01584/index.html?lang=fr
In German: http://www.edoeb.admin.ch/aktuell/01584/index.html?lang=de

Source : http://media-tech.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-street-view-en-suisse-ultimatum.html

1st point is unbelievable.
2nd and 3rd OK
4th OK (they made it in Japan)
5th OK (nice, while the "inform [...] one week before being placed online" is completely useless)
6th OK

What do you think?

> inform the affected towns and villages a week before
> carrying out the shooting

This is either so that you can mow your lawn, or put up your robots.txt sign.

... and the "nofollow" roads ;-)

There is already a response from Google, available in French and German here: http://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/streetviewch/business-uses

> This is either so that you can mow your lawn, or put
> up your robots.txt sign.

Perhaps Google should give us a way to opt out *before* they shoot the scenery... robots.txt also works before Google puts the stuff on search results. Though I don't know if it's feasible considering in many places the house will have several inhabitants, who may not necessarily all agree on whether to show up on Google Maps or not...

> develop a better way to make faces and number
> plates completely unrecognizable,

Face and number plate blurring already works pretty well, what exactly do they expect? What remains is that you may still be able to recognize a person in limited cases, e.g. by the stuff they wear.

> brings attention to the anonymization of sensitive
> facilities such as hospitals, schools or prisons,

Hmm. If there's indeed any danger from someone seeing a hospital or school, then the dangerous person could also simply walk up there to shoot photos themselves or memorize the scenery. Perhaps not wanting people to be able to see our schools and hospitals is both a bit paranoid, as well as futile.

If you speak French, there is a very good editorial in La Tribune de Genève newspaper: http://www.tdg.ch/actu/economie/editorial-street-view-montre-suisse-2009-09-14
they explain that the Swiss representative, Hanspeter Thür, is attacking Google only because he wants to be famous and he knows nothing about how IT works.

Tom, I don't understand your statement about point 1, since the anonymization of people is already active. Thür is asking to let it work better.
About the second point, hospitals and so, I'd like to point out some problems in translation. As far as I understand, German version speaks about anonymization (of people) in the neighborhood of hospitals. French version seems to ask anonymization of hospitals.
I think the German version is right: Thür is asking that anonymization should be very effective in those places, because this could affect privacy more than in other place.
The Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner could simply say his opinion, but has no legal power. I think he's trying to gain visibility with a very visible problem, that anyone could understand. I don't think Thür knows nothing about IT, but usually his actions do not arrive to newspaper, because affect boring privacy problems (maybe bigger than Street View).