Man Awarded $12,500 After Google Street View Photographed His Ass
The man, a police officer, was naked in his yard in 2017 when a Google Street View car came driving by. Even though he was behind a six-and-a-half-foot-tall fence, the camera caught him, quite literally, with his pants down. Google typically blurs faces when they appear on camera, but butts apparently can make it through the censors, and the man had his ass plastered on the internet, and it was easily identifiable along with his street name and home address.
According to CBS News, the man claimed that he was humiliated by the situation, subjected to ridicule from his coworkers and neighbors, all because Google's cameras could peep over his wall that kept his nudity private from prying eyes at normal human heights. Google, per the report, argued that his wall was not high enough, which is technically true in the sense that it literally did not prevent him from being photographed—though one could reasonably assume the wall was not installed with car-mounted, 360-degree cameras in mind.
The man's first attempt to get compensation was rejected by a court, which said he had no claim to damages and no one to blame but himself for 'walking around in inappropriate conditions in the garden of his home.' Which, you know, that's not an entirely wrong conclusion.
But an appeals court saw it his way, recognizing that his privacy was violated by the photo. 'This involves an image of a person that was not captured in a public space but within the confines of their home, behind a fence taller than the average-sized person,' the court said, calling the invasion of privacy 'blatant' and the whole situation an 'arbitrary intrusion into another's life.'
The court pointed out that Google has a practice of blurring faces and license plates on phones taken by its Street View cameras, so it clearly understands the potential harm that could occur if it published a photo of someone without permission. So it does seem a little weird to not blur the fully naked guy. 'No one wants to appear exposed to the world as the day they were born,' the judges wrote.
For his troubles, the man was awarded the $12.5k in damages from Google—which is significantly more than the $1 it paid to a Pittsburgh-area couple who accused the company of trespassing by taking photos of their private road, but less than the $13 million settlement it paid in a class-action case accusing it of collecting personal information as part of its Street View project.
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