Man caught naked on patio by Google Street View awarded more than £9,000
A police officer whose backside was exposed to the world on Google Street View has won more than £9,000 in compensation.
The Argentinean man was caught naked while a Google Street View car was taking images of his town in the province of Buenos Aires.
The officer was on his patio when the vehicle whizzed by and snapped his behind – which was then uploaded online for billions of people to see.
The red-faced man was awarded more than £9,000 in compensation after a fierce legal battle, with judges ruling Google had invaded his privacy.
The cop claimed he had been standing behind a six-foot wall when he was pictured naked, but Google insisted it wasn’t high enough.
The first legal battle went Google’s way, reports La Nacion.
A judge ruled it was the police officer’s fault because he was ‘walking around in inappropriate conditions in the garden of his home’.
They also decided that ‘the only person able to identify who the naked person was, was the actual man’.
The ‘policeman shot himself in the foot’ by his own action, the judge concluded.
But appeal judges overturned this decision and ordered Google Argentina and Google LLC to pay the man a total of 16 million pesos – around £9,600.
Judges decided that even though the police officer’s face was not visible, his address could still be determined by the street numbers.
They wrote: ‘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 invasion of privacy… is blatant.
‘There is no doubt that in this case there was an arbitrary intrusion into another’s life’.
They added that there was ‘no justification for (Google) to evade responsibility for this serious error that involved an intrusion into the plaintiff’s house, within his private domain, undermining his dignity. No one wants to appear exposed to the world as the day they were born.’
The ruling comes after a number of experts advised people to blur their house on Google Street View.
Security expert Will Geddes told Metro that criminals could use Google Maps to scope out properties and form plans to break in.
He said: ‘Blurring your house prevents anybody from getting any really specific information or intelligence on it.’
Anyone looking to obscure their home on Street View needs to first find their property on the map.
Then they can click ‘Report a problem’ in the lower right corner and fill out the relevant form.
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