What a bummer. Googler users are ogling shots like this one, from a residential neighborhood in San Francisco.

Google says its new, ground-level street views (reportedly taken from atop dusty old vans cruising city streets) will be a boon for tourism and local businesses in major cities.

But Google’s point-by-point photos, shaped into navigable 3D panoramas for internet consumption, also cover residential neighborhoods.

The company tells AFP (clip and excerpt, below) it is only taking its photos from public property, which is splitting hairs.

Photographing people in public places is legal in the United States, the AFP story points out. But photographing non-newsworthy people in their homes and private spaces, and in embarrassing moments, crosses a line.

clipped from rawstory.com “What Google does is not illegal, but irresponsible,” said Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a US non-profit group dedicated to defending Internet freedom and privacy.”Google Street View technology has been an intrusion of privacy to many people captured in their pictures. They could have waited until they developed technology that would allow them to obscure peoples’ faces.”