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Google Sued Over Privacy Invasion On Street View
mikkl666 writes "A couple from Pittsburgh has sued Google because a photo of their house appeared on Google Street View. They are demanding in excess of $25,000 to make up for the 'mental suffering' and the diminished value of their home. Their street is apparently marked with a 'Private Road' sign, and they claim that putting a photo of their property online is an 'intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion' of their privacy. Google, on the other hand, claims that this lawsuit is pointless since anyone can ask them to have pictures removed without legal action. We've previously discussed some of the privacy concerns surrounding Street View."
Presumably they see some of the value in their house being in the fact that it is on a "private" road. Google's images demonstrate how little that is really worth, thus lowering the value of their property.
It's more like
"There is no damage".
Boom. End of sentence. I would say there is no expectation of privacy from outer space or from the street. It's not reasonable.
As for "Mental Anguish", I suffer a lot of mental anguish every day that I'm in traffic. Who do I sue? And only $25K for mental anguish. Either they didn't have a lot of anguish or they don't have a lot of mental.
As for the diminished value of their house, it sounds like they're looking for Google to reimburse them for the downturn in the market that has cut housing values from 1/4 to 3/4's (depending on where you live).
Overall, this is the kind of lawsuit that makes you think the world is overpopulated. On so many levels.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Should they not seek to prosecute Google for trespassing then?
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
After seeing the map, I think the owners have a point -- the private road is essentially their driveway, and they have a line of trees screening their house from outside view. These people want privacy, and Google violated it. I don't know if it's worth $25,000, but on top of the incident where the Google Street View van drove onto a military base in contravention of Google's rules, I think this is a sign that the people taking the pictures are inadequately trained and lack common sense.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
I did a project more than a decade ago with EMTs and other first responders about vehicle INS systems ( before GPS became ubiquitous ). The drivers jokingly ( or maybe not ) noted that the eventual real effect of people that had overgrown vegitation, concealed drives, locked gates, non-existent or faded curb numbers, missing or angled house numbers and unlit or burned out porch lights was that response time effectively doubles or triples with a corresponding effect on medical survival rates. As society becomes more dependent of spatial technologies like StreetView, a similar counter-survival friction will occur as Fedex, Dominos, and EMTs are delayed by uncertain spots in their data. So that EMT's opinion was that eventually these 'hiding' people would be selected against and be left in the shallow end of the gene pool.
I don't know about the legal status of a "private road" but if I'm on public property, I can take a picture of your house as long as it can be seen from public property. It's not against the law. The only things that are exempt from this are government and military locations.