[drivebycomment]

Security was a blatant and transparent excuse for their protectionism. The same information has been and is available for practically anyone in the world, thanks to many different map service providers, satellite image providers, and even Korean map service companies making their service available outside Korea.

[webmobdev]

I should have specifically mentioned that I was talking about India - Street view was not allowed till now because the indian government wanted to study the matter more deeply before framing policies for it. To understand the hesitancy of the government, recall if you've come across any secure government facilities any where in the world. Most such infrastructure will have a common warning painted or posted publicly stating "Photography is prohibited / not allowed". Allowing the process of collecting street view data (i.e. taking photographs / videos of a locality) by foreign companies would make such warning redundant and a joke, even if they didn't use the data in their applications - they are not even supposed to have such data in the first place.