Anecdotally, in Berlin almost all street view pics are from 2008. It's actually kinda nice to take a tour of the past that way sometimes!
"Google is working closely with a German government privacy agency, ensuring that its imagery meets the country’s data privacy regulations. Among them is a requirement to delete older images, which means that you won’t be able to use Street View to travel as far back in time in Germany as in other countries once the new imagery is live."
Or we encrypt it very well, throw away the key, and wait for computation to catch up :)