A court has awarded an Argentine policeman $12,500 from Google after one of its Street View cameras photographed him off duty naked in his yard, enabling his bare buttocks to be exposed on the world wide internet.
The man, who hails from Bragado, a small town west of Buenos Aires, sued the internet giant in 2019, claiming it exposed him to ridicule at work and among his neighbors, CBS News and others reported.
He argued his privacy was invaded in the 2017 photo capture because he was behind a six-and-half foot wall.
The street capture showed his street and house number. Argentine TV covered the story and it was also widely distributed on social media.
The recent award came from Argentine appellate judges, who overruled a lower court decision that stated he was at fault for “walking around in inappropriate conditions in the garden of his home.”
Google reportedly argued the six-and-half-foot perimeter wall was not high enough to afford privacy.
But the judges cited Google’s policy of blurring faces and other identifiers like license plates for Street View as evidence the company knew it had a duty to avoid harm to third parties. The award came in pesos roughly equivalent to $12,500.
The judges wrote, according to the CBS report, “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.”
They added, “No one wants to appear exposed to the world as the day they were born.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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