A western Pennsylvania couple has sued Google Inc., saying pictures of their home on its Web site violate their privacy and devalued their property.

Images of the home Aaron and Christine Boring bought in the Pittsburgh suburb of Franklin Park in October 2006 appeared on Google’s “Street View” feature, which allows users to find street-level photos by clicking on a map.

“A major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy,” according to their complaint, filed Wednesday in state court, which also says the couple suffered mental distress.

The images must have been taken from the couple’s long driveway, which is labeled “Private Road,” and that violated their privacy, according to the complaint.

To gather photos for Street View, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google sends vehicles with mounted digital cameras up and down the streets of major metropolitan areas taking pictures. Many other companies take real estate photos the same way.

Google spokesman Larry Yu said the site indicates that property owners can get the company to removed images if they cite a good reason and can prove they own the property depicted.

“We absolutely respect that people may not be comfortable with some of the imagery on the site,” Yu said. “We actually make it pretty easy for people to submit a request to us to remove the imagery.”

If the Borings made such a request - especially if they told Google its photos must have been shot from their driveway - Yu said he is confident the image would be removed.

The couple’s attorney, Dennis Moskal, said the point is that the Borings’ privacy was invaded when the Google vehicle allegedly drove onto their property.

Removing the image won’t undo that damage, nor will it deter the company from doing the same thing in the future, Moskal said.

Registered child sex offenders will have to provide their email addresses to police in a move to stop them using social networking Web sites, the Home Office announced on Friday.

Police will pass the addresses on to the sites which will then be expected to monitor usage or stop offenders logging on.

Sex offenders will face up to five years in prison if they fail to hand over the details or provide a false email.

Google says it participated in the recent wireless spectrum auction not with the goal to win, but to help drive bidding high enough to ensure that open-access rules it had pushed for would be adopted.

“Google’s top priority heading into the auction was to make sure that bidding on the so-called ‘C Block’ reached the $4.6 billion reserve price that would trigger the important ‘open applications’ and ‘open handsets’ license conditions,” Richard Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel, and Joseph Faber, corporate counsel, wrote in a posting Thursday on Google’s Public Policy Blog.

“We were also prepared to gain the nationwide C Block licenses at a price somewhat higher than the reserve price; in fact, for many days during the early course of the auction, we were the high bidder. But it was clear, then and now, that Verizon Wireless ultimately was motivated to bid higher (and had far more financial incentive to gain the licenses),” the entry said.