Francis Street in Providence, as seen on Google’s Street View.

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The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

PROVIDENCE It’s one thing to look down on a photograph of your house from outer space, which many of us have done, courtesy of Google Earth. It’s quite another to “travel” to a photo of the front of your house along virtual streets, courtesy of Google Street View.

Of course, it depends on where you live, as the program is just getting off the ground. Many cities are not yet covered and the coverage of some — including Providence — is incomplete. Even in the larger cities, coverage of the suburbs is thin. In addition, there are competing Web sites, but none nearly as comprehensive.

While a great deal of Providence is available, I confess I found it fascinating to check out my former homes out of state — on E. 10th Street in New York City and Goliad Avenue in Dallas.

Street View was launched last May with street views of Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco. It has since expanded to 23 cities.

Providence was added on Dec. 10, along with Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Indianapolis and the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

“Street View is a feature of Google Maps that enables users to view and navigate within 360-degree street level imagery of various cities in the U.S.,” said Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo in an e-mail from the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. “. . . users can virtually walk the streets of a city and preview destinations like restaurants and hotels before arriving.”

The images are based on high-definition digital photographs that form a 360-degree panoramic view of a street at ground level that can be viewed from any direction. The streets are navigated by using a mouse to click on directional lines and arrows superimposed on the photos. The mouse can also be used to focus in on details. Names of the streets are also superimposed.

If a user wants to jump to another part of the city, he or she can click on the new intersection on a regular map and the photographic street view of that intersection jumps into view.

Filadelfo said the photographs are gathered by an undisclosed number of vehicles equipped with imaging technology that includes lasers that collect 3D geometric data.

She said the photographs are a few months old when a new city is launched, and added that they would not be refreshed in the near future.

“We do plan on refreshing Street View imagery in the future,” she said. “However, at this time we’re focused on providing Street View imagery for a wide variety of cities throughout the world.”

With its vehicles shooting pictures according to a synchronized, impersonal schedule, Google has run into problems when people have been inadvertently photographed in embarrassing or unwanted situations, said Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Examples include women sunbathing topless, men entering or leaving strip clubs, protesters outside abortion clinics and women entering or leaving domestic violence shelters.

“There are some obvious privacy concerns raised when a system like this is implemented,” said Brown.“On the one hand, the images are taken in public places. But on the other hand, people may not be aware their picture is being taken and that can be, depending on the circumstances, embarrassing or unwanted.”

Google says while it takes “privacy concerns very seriously,” it only takes photographs on public property and is no different from “what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”

At the same time, the company provides a way to remove imagery that is deemed objectionable.

“We provide easily accessible tools for flagging inappropriate or sensitive imagery for review and removal,” said Filadelfo.

“Each Street View imagery bubble contains a link to “Street View Help,” where users can report objectionable images,” she said. “Objectionable imagery includes nudity, certain types of locations [for example, domestic violence shelters] and clearly identifiable individuals, if those individuals request takedown. We routinely review takedown requests and act quickly to remove objectionable imagery. To date we have received very few imagery removal requests.”

However, Brown said he was not sure how easy the process was, citing a case in northern California involving the ACLU. “It was not an easy process,” he said.

He added that the reason Google has not received many complaints may be because most people are unaware they have been photographed. And he raised the question of circumstance. “An image may show a man outside a strip club, but he may have been walking past,” he said. “The image can be misleading.”

At the same time, while Google may take down offending images, there are a number of Web sites that specialize in showing compromising shots, including mashable.com’s “15 Google Street View Sightings.”

Privacy concerns have reportedly slowed coverage of Canadian cities and could well prove a problem in a number of European cities. Google has also delayed coverage of the Baltimore-Washington-

northern Virginia region because of concerns related to Homeland Security.

However, Google has said that its ultimate goal is to provide street views of the entire world, an ambition that promises to be cleaner than paint company Sherwin-Williams’ ambition to “Cover the Earth.”

For additional information, check out:

http://books.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

http://mashable.com/

http://www.mapjack.com/

http://www.everyscape.com/

pelsworth@projo.com