The controversial Google Street View project has arrived in Australia taking snaps in our major cities and towns.
The project has already captured images at street level in 17 US cities and attached them to the highly popular Google Maps online application.
It was launched in the US in May, and quickly attracted controversy after claims several images breached privacy.
Some images identified men outside strip clubs, women sunbaking in parks and even captured a woman's g-string as she emerged from her car.
Soon after, Google modified several images to remove or mask the identity of individuals.
Google Australia's head of corporate communications Rob Shilkin said Australia's privacy laws were tighter than those in the United States, and that no one's privacy would be compromised.
"We're giving very considerable thought to how best to safeguard Australian's privacy, including consulting experts and community groups, while enabling all Australians to benefit from this new feature," Mr Shilkin said.
"We're focusing on finding ways to ensure that individuals' faces are not identifiable in pictures taken in Australia and that licence plate numbers are not identifiable in Australia."
Cameras mounted on top of "Google-labelled" cars will travel around Australian cities and towns, pausing to take a 360-degree photo, record the location of the image using GPS, and then move to the next location.
The images will be collected throughout summer and are likely to appear online in the second half of next year.
David Vaile, executive director of UNSW's Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, hopes Google is transparent in its attempt to protect the public's privacy.
"The gold standard for something like this would be public privacy impact assessment that occurs before they are locked in, coupled with a commitment to comply fully with Australian law and legal protections, without seeking to use their corporate structure to escape through jurisdictional tricks," he said.
Mr Vaile is also concerned that Street View may result in unexpected situations that would cause embarrassment to individuals.
"What if you happen to have two people of different sex on a back verandah and you have a wife that sees this and says `that looks like my husband, but who's that there?'," Mr Vaile said.
Despite the concerns, there are many who are looking forward to Australia being added to the Street View stable, including geography teachers, tourism operators and real estate agents.
"Google Street View will help give people buying property a great feel for the local neighbourhoods and streets that they might be interested in," Ray White Real Estate Balmain proprietor, Matthew Cooper said.
"It will improve consumer's knowledge and ability to make real estate choices that best suit them."
Mr Shilkin was reluctant to provide details on where or when the cars would be capturing images.
"I don't want to announce any particular locations to raise expectations or cause disappointment," Mr Shilkin said.