WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has complied with a request by the Pentagon to remove some online images from its street-level map service because they pose a security threat to U.S. military bases, military and company officials said on Thursday.

Gen. Gene Renuart, head of the military command responsible for homeland defense, said the Pentagon had talked to Google about the risks and expected the company to cooperate in removing selected images from its Street View service.

“We have been contacted by the military,” Google spokesman Larry Yu said. “In those instances where they (the U.S military) have expressed concerns about the imagery, we have accommodated their requests.”

The Defense Department, which is still studying how many images are available, has also banned Google teams from taking video images on bases.

“We’ve got to get a sense of what is there and see how we can mitigate it,” Renuart said.

But because many images were taken from public streets, the military may not have a legal right to request that videos be pulled.

Street View, a feature of Google Maps, offers ground-level, 360-degree views of streets in 30 U.S. cities. Web users are able to drive down a street, in a virtual sense, using their mouse to adjust views of roadside scenery.

The feature has become a popular service for drivers seeking to plan a trip to an unfamiliar neighborhoods. But from the outset, Street View has been a magnet of controversy over potential privacy invasion of people captured in the images.

In one instance, a man was pictured exiting a San Francisco strip club. In another case, a woman was shown sunbathing. Complaints have even included a woman asking that a picture of her cat be taken down, a request Google denied.

The images that worry the Pentagon include views of bases, including security at the entrances to those installations.

“It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings,” said Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command.

“I think that poses a real security risk for our military installations,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.

The Google spokesman said his company’s policy was to photograph only those images visible from public roads.

“It is against Google’s policy for a driver to seek access to a military base,” Yu said.

Street View has yet to be introduced outside the United States. Web-based Google Maps and a related computer-based service called Google Earth have drawn criticism from a variety of countries for providing images of sensitive locations, such as military bases or potential targets of terror attacks.

The services rely on civilian versions of satellite maps that it licenses from commercial mapping services.

Pakistan says it has lifted a ban on YouTube, after the website removed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, adding that an earlier worldwide outage sparked by its actions was unintentional.

Telecommunications officials said that the popular website was up and running again in the conservative Muslim nation after YouTube removed “highly profane and sacrilegious footage” that was offensive to Islam.

“We have issued instructions to all internet service providers that YouTube should be unblocked as the specific content has been removed by the website,” Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) spokesman Khurram Mehran said.

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US may require European visitors to register online

Europeans who visit the U.S. will be required to fill out an online questionnaire two days before they enter the country under a proposal being studied by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The department has been discussing the idea internally for about a month, said Hugo Teufel III, chief privacy officer for the DHS, in a meeting with journalists in Paris on Thursday. He could not say when the registration system might be introduced.

The proposal will likely increase tensions between the U.S. and Europe at a time when the two sides are already in heated debate over U.S. demands for data about air passengers flying from Europe to the U.S.

The U.S. says it needs access to more data to prevent suspected terrorists from entering the country, while European regulators counter that the demands are excessive and worry how the data will be used.

The online registration would complement the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, a program disclosed by the DHS in November that assigns a “risk assessment” to people entering and leaving the U.S. , to determine the likelihood that they pose a security threat.

The registration system would likely require approval by the U.S. Congress before it could be introduced, Teufel said. “It’s a fairly new initiative in that we’ve been discussing it internally for about a month,” he added.

He offered few other details Thursday, but Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff discussed the proposal earlier this week in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. Chertoff said the U.S. wanted to “elevate the security level generally” for foreign visitors, particularly in light of its looser visa requirements for some countries.

The online registration “would be similar to what they do in Australia where visa waiver travelers would register online in advance, and they would, therefore, know before they arrive in the United States whether there was going to be a problem with their being admitted,” Chertoff told the newspaper. “The registration would have a shelf life of some years. It wouldn’t be something you do every trip, you would do it periodically,” he added.

The DHS will prepare a “privacy impact assessment” on the registration plan, Teufel said Thursday. Such assessments cover issues like how data is used, who can access it and for how long it will be retained.

Teufel suggested that the assessment report would be made available to the public, although U.S. law makes exceptions for reports about systems used by the intelligence community, he said.

Teufel was appointed by Chertoff in July last year and is responsible for the DHS’s privacy policies.

 

Benazir Bhutto killed in attack

 

Pakistani former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a presumed suicide attack.

News of her death was confirmed by a military spokesman and members of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Ms Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally in the town of Rawalpindi when the attack occurred.

At least 15 other people are reported killed in the attack and several more were injured. Ms Bhutto had twice been the country’s prime minister.

She had been campaigning ahead of elections due in January.

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