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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."
I just love it when people grab any occasion to try to sue as much money as they can from large (and rich) companies, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. A chance these companies also have dozens of lawyers for whenever that happens.
You just got troll'd!
Telling people that there is no damage because you can ask for something to be removed is silly IMO, that doesn't cover the time it was up until the request was followed and I dislike the idea of opt-out in general, asking someone for permission should happen BEFORE acting, not just acting and telling people they have to come to you to revoke their permission.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Here's what makes this case different than the other StreetView suits... the Google van wasn't supposed to be on this road in the first place. A private road means that the owners of the road take no government funding or care for it, and therefore get to decide who they'll allow on it. Google wasn't wanted, so there's the problem.
I don't like opt-out memberships. The ability for companies to get away with opt-out usually comes from legislation. Not simple company choice.
Google never ceases to teach me new things. I guess it's okay to do impolite things as long as I remind the victim that they could have asked me to stop at any time.
How long until google is indexing my underwear drawer?
I dunno it seems like a case of bad judgment on the driver of the mapping vehicle. If you look at the pictures it seems like they drove right up to their garage, taking pictures the whole time.
It also seems like provider of the maps is also at fault, if you follow along on Google maps you can see that the street appears to extend all the way to their garage.
But, there doesn't seem to be any "private road" labeling on the map nor was their any sign visible when I followed the street via Streetview to their house (though they did delete the offending pictures, so maybe the sign was there?)
Regardless though, I would expect that the drivers of these vehicles would know better then to keep the pictures they took of a property while parked in front of a garage.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Especially after this lawsuit, they'll have to get the hell out of there to live up to their name.
I think the judge should have a big red button on the bench, connected to a solenoid and trap-door located under the plaintiff and his lawyer. As volcanoes are in short supply, a pool full of hungry crocodiles would do.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
IANAL, however it seems like this should come down a question of visibility. Is the house visible from the street? Then it seems that publishing a photo that includes the house shouldn't be a problem. It would be different if it were a close-up photo of the house, or one looking inside it, but if it's just the same view available to a passer-by, what's the harm? My only question is whether the 'Private Road' sign could cause problems. What's a 'private road?' Do the residents pave it and light it, or is it really a public road maintained by the municipality with a sign that discourages visitors?
This reminds me a bit of companies that place security guards to stop people from photographing their buildings. My reaction has always been that you shouldn't put a building in a public place if you don't want it to be photographed.
Why should they have listened to you?
Perhaps because he was right, and the alternative was continuing to live in denial of the idea that anything Google does could possibly be wrong? Just read Google's view of the subject:
Google, on the other hand, claims that this lawsuit is pointless since anyone can ask them to have pictures removed without legal action.
Sure, but I bet they wouldn't have volunteered any compensation or accepted any penalty in recognition of the fact that they did do something wrong.
Google have become far too big for their boots in recent years. They need to be taught the meaning of respecting people's privacy, and now they're a shareholder-driven company, the most effective way to do that is to penalise them financially. If everyone who finds Google's Street View is unreasonably invading their privacy gets awarded a substantial sum of money then Google will learn that this behaviour is not acceptable and stop doing it. (Failing that, we should start locking up their directors, but obviously it's not likely to come to that.)
Personally, I believe any photograph taken without permission that looks into someone's home is an invasion of privacy. This is not at all the same situation as a neighbour casually passing by in the street, where no-one is both recording what they see and republishing it for the rest of the world in searchable form. Right now, a lot of our laws on things like privacy and data protection are well behind the curve in terms of technology. I can only hope that publicising a few more cases like Simon Bunce, where someone's entire life is wrecked because one leak of personal data snowballed into identity theft and all that implies, will wake up governments to the fact that big business's need to spam us all with advertising and keep our credit card numbers on file for... well, because they couldn't be bothered not to... is not more important then your right and mine to live a private life free from unwarranted scrutiny by all and sundry.
Personally, I hope the complainant gets the $25k in this case, not because I necessarily believe they suffered as much as their claims suggest, but because I think it would be healthy to have such a damaging precedent on file as a deterrent to Google and anyone else who thinks that just because they can collect and process vast amounts of data that means they have no ethical or legal obligations on how they do so.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Either way, they must have a very strange life
oh, yeah... I guess they could be looking to make a quick buck.
In Texas a private road is defined as one maintained privately, as opposed to a public road that is maintained by a government (municipal, county, state, or federal). Usually the residents who use the road share the responsibility to maintain it.
I assume in Pennsylvania it's the same. If you don't want people driving on a road, you need to mark it as such. Put a gate, or a sign forbidding unauthorized access.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
You have no expectation of privacy with regard to Google Street View photographs, or any other "shutterbug" snapping pictures on your street, provided the photos were taken from public property, and were not done in such a way as to grossly invade your space (telephoto lenses into your bathroom window, for example).
Here's a good article that points to guidelines from people who go to court to defend their members' rights to do what is in their rights (Google's Street View team would be wise to join up):
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2005-12-29-camera-laws_x.htm
From what I understand about the equipment and methods in use by the Google Street View project, I wouldn't expect them to be in violation of the "zoom lenses" provisions in any "invasion" statute in these states.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
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?"
Blah, have they even looked at street view? The images obtained are a joke. Unless the vehicle drive right up within 15 ft of something the images are grossly unfocused beyond 15 ft.
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
If you look at Google maps, you can see quite clearly that their house is at the end of a private road. The Google road crew drove onto private property, continuing to take high resolution photographs before turning round and going back the way they came.
A road sign clearly indicated that this was a private road. Maybe Google's road crew didn't understand English, took a wrong turning, or their maps were out of date. Since they took photographs every 10 metres or so, having a photograph of their property is not going to affect its value by any significant amount.
This really does amount to trespass and invasion of privacy. Any individual is free to walk the streets of their neighborhood and take photographs, so long as they don't enter private property. But as soon as they wander into their neighbors driveways and gardens, neighbors would be justified in calling the Police, and getting them to be given a warning or to be arrested.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Allegheny County has a real estate assessment website which has pictures of every house in the county. Including the Borings:
http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Image.asp?CurrBloLot=0823E00136000000&Street=Oakridge
One of the things that Google needs to change is the behavior, "we do first, and you can remove later."
It sort of reminds me of the idea, "hey I will walk along the neighborhood and attempt to open all doors and see which ones are unlocked. Of course if you tell me after the fact then I will not do it again later on."
So why does Google do this? Simple, its their entire business model. Think about. Imagine if Google had to get the OK from everybody before submitting pictures, web search, and book contents. That would absolutely kill their revenue.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
vs "Opt In"
Whenever a company operates from "consent by omission" (by not getting permission first, as in "opt in" they are opening themselves up for such questions.
Frankly, I dislike a lot of what Google is doing with this feature. There is a big difference between showing street level photos of commercial areas and residential areas. I think Google has crossed that line here.
If Google operated on an "opt in" basis they'd be using those photos with permission and thus, be immune from lawsuits.
Frankly, Google is acting more like Microsoft and less like Google of 4-5 years ago every day...
Corporatism != Free Market
I'm sorry, but you are spectacularly missing my point.
I do have an expectation of privacy in my own home. This expectation is born of common courtesy and acceptable polite behaviour. Moreover, I claim that I am far from the only person with such a view: if you walked along a street obviously going up to people's windows and taking detailed photographs of the inside of their home, do you not think a substantial number of them would also have a problem with this behaviour? The fact that Google is doing this far more disceetly does not change the nature of what they are doing, nor the feelings many people would have about it if they knew it was going on.
You are in essence making a legal argument: the law does not currently prohibit such abusive behaviour. I am making an ethical one: if that is so, then the law is broken.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm not usually a proponent of psychoactive drugs, but when objections to Google Street View turn into a geo political rant and ideological spleen venting about power politics in a war zone, then I think a Valium is definitely called for.
I hate printers.
If this really was about tresspassing, you'd think that the property owners would have sued for that, instead of this "mental anguish" and "reduced property value" bullshit.
And there is no equivalent to remove your house from their satellite stuff if you so desire.
Not unless you are, say, the US Government, that is. Apparently their right to privacy extends to not having photographs of their facilities publicly available.
There should be a constitutional rule that says no government or corporate body may ever have a right not universally available to an individual citizen. If something is important enough for the guys with power and money to protect, it's important enough to protect it for everyone else, too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Right, but they ask you that as a way to find out if you have any ideas that may make you useful to them as a new hire - to see if you think beyond the box or beyond "make search better". As someone who has to do some amount of interviewing for a company of 60,000 people - I can tell you that is the type of question I may ask folks. But if I thought you had a good idea on something, I could take it to my manager, who could take it to their manager, who could send it to the "guy in charge of that". Any step along the way the idea could get quashed, ignored by someone "too busy" or morphed into something else resembling someone's pet project that now has "vetting from an outside party".
I don't think it is a reasonable assumption that you told the legal and technical teams that actually work on Google Streets anything . You certainly tried to tell them something - but that message getting to anyone who could act on it is probably vanishingly small.
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
The UK has similar "Right to Roam" legislation which applies to many pathways and scenic areas. It's something to consider when buying a house or even office space in a business park. You find out that the local residents use your driveway or car-park as a short cut to the local supermarket because 1800 years, a Roman goat-herder went to court to maintain a right-of-way between the town market and the local pasture.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
Remember last month when a Danish journalist was talking on his cell phone and wandered into a woman's lawn? She came after him with a gun of all things!
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
They are.
No, that should read: One does not simply walk into Google...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Google is not walking up to windows, doing so would be as serious as using a zoom lens to access the subjects home to take photos.
In this case Google is doing neither, using a standard lens to take a picture of buildings and streets is hardly a problem, sure using zoom lenses and stuff or walking up to windows to get detailed pictures of people inside their homes would be.
By your definition taking photos of buildings in general would be a crime if there were any people inside said buildings, there is the whole thing of wanting to take photos of the architecture, not to mention the obvious problem of telling people they can't take pictures of their friends ANYWHERE in an urban area as they would also capture shots of buildings, and thus probably people inside those buildings or are people wanting to take photographs supposed to peer into the buildings first to make sure no people are visible?
So we should stop caring because the photos they're taking of the inside and outside of people's houses and using for profit are low quality?
Thank goodness for that, I thought it might be a problem.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Search.asp
Allegheny County already put all this information online, years ago.
Also I'm not sure how you can "clearly see" it's a private road. Since Google posted detailed pictures of the area you would think we could see this "private road" sign somewhere, no? I just used street view to pan around and all I could find was a single wooden post with "Oakridge Ln" painted on it (where it meets Reis Run Road.) In fact you can still follow Oakridge all the way up to their house before google says "This image is no longer available" and still see no posted sign.
Here's another picture of their house:
http://www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Image.asp?CurrBloLot=0823E00136000000&Street=oakridge
The people claim Allegheny County took their picture from a public road which, judging by the picture, is the same road Google was on.
Also how's this for invasion of privacy: They bought their 1 bedroom house in 2006 for $163,000 and it sits on 1.82 acres of land. It gets a D+ rating. It has no AC, 1 bathroom, and 984 sq. ft. of living area.
That's all available on Allegheny County's assessment website. Along with a nice picture.
My guess is they saw this on Google, ran to Home Depot for a private road sign, and decided to cash in.
Google should countersue the couple for mental anguish for having to deal with another completely frivolous lawsuit and the stress on the employees that it creates. Also for defamation of character and libel.
200 million should be a good value.
1. Put potentially objectionable image up
2. Wait for lawsuit
3. ??
4. Profit!
$ make available
I guess these people don't know i can goto their local clerk and get their name and assessed value too. Or a host of other public or easily purchased record sources are available.
Views from the *street* are public. Don't like it, move further back from the road and put up trees. ( and put a cover over your property or move underground since satellite images are public too, since i could see that same view from the street, with a REALLY large ladder. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
(1) $25k isn't exactly punitive to Google - it probably wouldn't even cover litigation costs if this went to court. Eric Schmidt probably loses that much change in his sofa each year.
(2) Others have posted that there are no signs visible indicating that this named road is private, or that trespassing is prohibited. It is entirely likely (though I don't know for certain) that there is, in fact, a public right of way centered on the road. That is often the case in Virginia even when the road is listed as private.
(3) They must be going fucking bonkers over their county's GIS website, which lists data on the property and sales price information.
I'm more libertarian than the average Joe, but I have a very hard time getting worked up over this. Get back to me if they start tracking people movements without consent...I'll back you up at that point.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I could insult that reply in similarly vague terms, but just for kicks, I shall annihilate it point by point.
First this is a non-story legally and financially until we hear otherwise.
That doesn't mean it isn't of interest to the many people already discussing it on this forum.
If they believed they were doing something that wrong, they wouldn't have done it in the first place.
Yes, because corporations have never been known to do things that are unethical or even outright illegal just to make a quick buck. That's why there are so many happy Enron shareholders in the world today.
Their strategy of putting everything up and then removing things only when requested is the only privacy approach that is technically feasible.
No, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure there's another possibility that's technically very easy to achieve: they could just not systematically collect photos of people's homes without consent in the first place.
No-one is forcing them to run this system. The fact that it's difficult to do so in a way that complies with what I claim most people would agree is common decency (they were even going onto private property in this case!) is their problem, and it's one they need to overcome if they want to run the system.
Your stance is BS legally.
No, my stance is that if the law allows this behaviour, then the law is BS. That is not the same thing.
You also make it sound like this is some devious plan to sell people's privacy for money.
Now that is hilarious. Google's entire business model is based on being the biggest data gatherer in the world, and extracting relevant personal information from that data in order to target advertising that generates them profit.
I have worked at Google for about a year, and you have no idea how they work.
Ah, I see. You were one of them. Now we know why you were so defensive.
I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Google is a big company, your average Slashdot reader is some level of geek, and as a consequence it's a good bet that many of us know one or more people who work or worked at Google. Whatever you saw in your few moths in one part of the company is not the only view anyone here has into the company as a whole and how it operates. In fact, it is entirely possible that there are people following this discussion who know way more about Google than you do.
They have more money than they know what to do with. Streetview, like many projects, was started with no financial incentive in mind at all - just a product that they thought would be interesting and useful. If they find out how to monetize later, great. If not, it's just one more cool thing Google does. That is the idea behind virtually every project Google does outside of Search & Ads.
Perhaps you don't realise this for some reason, but Google is there to make money for their shareholders. Since they became a listed company, that is their primary responsibility. It doesn't have to be direct and immediate — after all, half of "R&D" is the R bit — but if you think they will run projects like this and not attempt to monetize them at some point, you're kidding yourself. In fact, it might well be illegal for their directors not to do so if they found a legal way of doing it.
I didn't realize that Google (and other)'s ability to make most of the Internet free to users by providing inconspicuous text ads was a horrible privacy invasion.
Apparently you also didn't realise that most of the Internet was free to users without targetted advertising before Google came along. Whether the greater volume of material now available in a Google Ads-supported world is an improvement over
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Remember Google did this intentionally to ruin this specific family's privacy. Or at least these people say Google did it intentionally. What Google should do is remove the house, but in it's place put an ad.
Can I bum a sig?
I used to live at the end of a dead end road, and my roommate (whom was purchasing the home) actually owned 1/2 of the road from a telephone pole back to the fence/property line.
We had lots of signs up stating "PRIVATE PROPERTY" "NO TRESPASSING" "Violators will be shot, survivors will be shot again." On a few occasions right after we moved in, we had police patrols in our neighborhood (due to "gang" activity, but that's another story) and they would turn around in our driveway.
The cops were cool, and eventually let us know those signs didn't mean much, unless we actually owned the road, luckily we had the paperwork showing property lines. After that the cops wouldn't (couldn't?) use the very end of the road to turn around in, unless we had personally talked to that officer and gave him our permission. Heck, we let them use our property to conduct a few stake outs too.
So if these people live on a "Private" road, they better be ready to prove they own that land. If not, I say Google had every right to take some pictures.
So, the government is able to levy taxes. Should every citizen be able to do that as well? It's also able to declare war upon another country, declare a state of emergency, and so on and so forth. Imagine what would happen if all of the idiots in the country were able to do that.
Everything is subjective.
I'm also not a lawyer, but from what I can tell, private roads are private because they were built and are maintained by private citizens rather than the government. Mainly because they go places that few people in the area would like to go.
They'll lose the case because there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy to claim. Law enforcement and emergency vehicles are legally allowed on all of those roads as necessary, and so are other people. If they had a gate or barrier then they might have a case, but as it is now they're basically just invoking the Streisand effect.
Living in a low traffic area isn't sufficient to give that expectation from the legal point of view. The open fields doctrine would be completely pointless otherwise.
If you shouldn't sue, what should you do when someone bigger and stronger than you does something wrong to you? Law enforcement's not gonna help, they don't care about trivialities. Personally, I'm happy about this lawsuit, because it may serve as a reminder to Google not to go over the line when making private things public.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Were you interviewing for a position in their legal team? If not, I can completely understand why they didn't take legal advice from a non legal potential employee. Plus, its unlikely that the interviewer himself would be in any position to influence that kind of a decision.
Plus, you basically gave a group think answer to a question aimed at exploring your creativity.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I have no problems with anyone that wants to take a photo of my home. I have a problem when they want to put in a database that can be datamined and used to analyze me.
Sure Google will remove the photos And when Microsoft, Yahoo, and Verifax start doing the same, you're supposed to click their link to remove even though they never inform you that you've been added to their database? Some of us value our privacy but don't consider it our onus to have to spend time searching for people trying to breach our privacy. Some would compare this to web indexing, but it's not at all alike because of the robot exclusion standard. If I don't want someone to index my website, I place a file that says such, and if they do they're likely breaking the law.
But why should I care? Anyone can see my house right?? and that's fine, the problem comes when they stick it in a database. I actually expected better from slashdot in regard to this. We all know about datamining, all these different sources that can be used to gather information and make larger conclusions. The idiots that put pictures of themselves on Facebook doing drugs or underage drinking have only themselves to blame. But what about the people that get their photo snapped in some place they shouldn't be. If I had a moral agenda to push it wouldn't be hard to search out pictures of all "undesirable" places (strip clubs, gay bars, etc) to identify people and contact their employers. Plus this is just the start, do you think google will be the only company to ever want to do this? Do you think they'll stop after one picture, no they need to update their content.
Suppose something really bad is placed on internet, like a woman leaving her blinds open while undressing. She'll only find out when someone sees it, by then it's likely out of googles hands and posted on forums all over the place. Should google be responsible?
But the robots exclusion standard CAN'T work with real world information. Suppose we say we can opt-out of all databases. how do we do that? Place our facial information in a file so if we match a photo it's rejected, placing our facial information in everyones database in the process?! Or register our house and just acecpt that people can search for where we go?
What I think google should do if they want to be respectful of people is send out notices to all residents when they take photos of their block. Give them 30 days to opt out before the photos are placed online. This won't happen not just because it'd raise costs, but because they'd find every block has at least one person opposed. Plus they should blur our any people, license plates and other identifiable information in photos
Here is the proof. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9004971557883691425&q=google+maps+street+view&total=258&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
Who owns what in "road law" in most jurisdictions is fairly complicated. A so called "private road" could be anything from an abandoned public road to a road that was built by the landowner himself or another adjoining land owner who has given that landowner an easement.
Even if the road itself is totally owned by the landowner, whether they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" from photographs on that road is a question that is probably undecided or unclear. Even if the answer is yes, the issue of damages is probably laughable. A generic photo of a house on a road? I'd give them $100. If the photo had a picture of them "doing it" in the window, maybe $25,000 would be justifiable.
If you want to read more, check out this link: The Pennsylvania Legislatorâ€(TM)s Municipal Deskbook, Third Edition (2006), Road Law Basics Chapter: http://tinyurl.com/6hvvnk
Sorry, I am a surveyor. Private is just that, Google was trespassing. They have no rights to go on that road. This is tantamount to walking inside someone's house and taking pictures of their bedroom. If the road is private, they have every expectation of privacy. Sorry Google, better read those posted signs better next time. Open and shut case. Any good judge will find for the plaintiff on this one. If this were a public road, fine, all is fair, but it is private for a reason. I personally would have the association go after them. And for all those who don't know, yes, private does mean greater value. You can control who comes in and out of your development. That is why the signs are posted for residents and guest only. Private roads are not maintained by the local government, so no plowing, no garbage pickup, etc... With that also comes the expectation of privacy. Whoops, Google better get a good lawyer for this one. As long as the street had a sign on it, that is enough of a warning for those entering. There does NOT need to be a gate or a speed bump or anything else. Just a sign to designate as private. There really is no excuse for this. If they want to do mapping, they should have a F'ing surveyor on staff. Guess they don't. I wonder if the licensed surveyor's salary is less than what these people will get out of Google. There is tons of precedent on this. I am really surprised Google was the one to make this mistake. So much for "Don't be evil."
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
For the most part you are also allowed to take photos of government and (some military) locations. from http://www.krages.com/ThePhotographersRight.pdf [read the whole paper for the details that I've ommited]
The General Rule
The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs.
Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks. Property owners may legally prohibit photography on their premises but have no right to prohibit others from photographing their property from other locations. Whether you need permission from property owners to take photographs while on their premises depends on the circumstances. In most places, you may reasonably assume that taking photographs is allowed and that you do not need explicit permission. However, this is a judgment call and you should request permission when the circumstances suggest that the owner is likely to object. In any case, when a property owner tells you not to take photographs while on the premises, you are legally obligated to honor the request.
Some Exceptions to the Rule
There are some exceptions to the general rule. A significant one is that commanders of military installations can prohibit photographs of specific areas when they deem it necessary to protect national security. The U.S. Department of Energy can also prohibit photography of designated nuclear facilities although the publicly visible areas of nuclear facilities are usually not designated as such. Members of the public have a very limited scope of privacy rights when they are in public places. Basically, anyone can be photographed without their consent except when they have secluded themselves in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, medical facilities, and inside their homes.
Permissible Subjects
Despite misconceptions to the contrary, the following subjects can almost always be photographed lawfully from public places:
accident and fire scenes
children
celebrities
bridges and other infrastructure
residential and commercial buildings
industrial facilities and public utilities
transportation facilities (e.g., airports)
Superfund sites
criminal activities
law enforcement officers
The real question is "Is the road actually all their property?". Apparently, this "Private Road" has a street sign and has several other houses on it which would be an indicator to me that it's public. Unless the peope sueing own all the land sirectly around the road and have it gated or clearly marked "No Trasspassing" where someone in a car could easily see it, I can't see how they have a case.
Someone save me from this sanity.
I think street view is neat but really should be opt in.
I've seen pictures of forum member's houses where you can see things a would be thief would love to get their hands on just because they had their garage door open at the time google drove bye.
A lot of good opt out does when your atv, rims or classic corvette are already stolen.
That's simply not true. Most private roads are paid for with private funds, including the upkeep and maintenance thereof. If the homeowners who pay for that upkeep want to keep people off of them, they have every right to do so. Of course, without a gate, one can reasonably ignore private road signs, so long as your purpose for visiting is within reason (driving to see someone who lives there, etc.). It is, however, still private property, and you do not have any automatic right to take photos on private property, nor certainly to exploit someone else's private property for your own gain. For example, you cannot tie onto a private road without permission of the road's owner.
Further, every gated community I've ever had any experience with has had a homeowner's association that pays for the upkeep of commons areas, including the road. The city/county only pays for upkeep of roads that have been explicitly deeded to it, and a private road generally has not been. Further, many private roads that I've seen do not meet the minimum requirements for county maintenance. This is particularly the case for roads up in the mountains of California, where a one-lane road with no shoulder, no retaining wall, and little bits along the edge sliding down a sheer cliff every time it rains do not qualify for being deedable to the county.... :-)
From a legal perspective, I don't expect this suit to go anywhere. If there is a reasonable vantage point from a private road, they have no case, and even if there isn't, a private road with no gate will probably be considered a semipublic place. The implicit offer is made to allow the public to enter to make contact with the owners. As a result, as such, you have no more expectation of privacy when viewable from such a road than you would in a hotel lobby. Both are privately owned with a general invitation to pass. The owner of the hotel can ask you to stop, maybe even to ask you to not publish the photos (and if you don't comply with such a request, you're probably screwed), but if you don't hear from the owner, the owner probably doesn't have the right to sue you later for an invasion of privacy when he/she discovers that photograph in the newspaper a week later.
Bottom line is that legally unless you have a gate, a road is probably semipublic regardless of who owns it, so Google probably had the right to be there, tacky as it may be for them to ignore "No Trespassing" signs on the road. Laws on this may vary from place to place, of course, so you should not consider this legal advice. :-)
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Not only are their no laws preventing this, there are actually legal rulings stating exactly the opposite. Any part of your home, INCLUDING the interior, that can be viewed from a public location, or OTHER private property and persons admitted to that other private property, is your own responsibility to hide if you wish privacy from view. In some states, the use of magnification or zoom technology to take pictures "specifically" of internal spaces of your home (ie voyerism) may be illegal, but if I get some of the interior of your home while taking a picture of the house as a whole, or of a person in the yard, that's not illegal anywhere, though you have the right to ask me not to do so at that time. The only thing I can't do is use that photo to make money without your persmission (unless it;s a public building or in the case of rental property the owner can give permission even if you don't).
...and that private road? I can LEGALLY walk down it at any time as long as I don't stray more than 6' from the road itself. You can ask me to leave, but unless there's a local loitering law you can only ask me not to hang out there, and you can't prevent me from walking down it over and over again. (unless the road is posted no-trasspassing, ad serves ONLY your house, ie, it's a driveway.) As soon as the city puts a sign there, or gives it an official name, whether it's their road or yours, I can still walk on it unmolested, and sue YOU if you threaten me otherwise.
If you have an open window, walk in front of it naked, and someone sees your johnson and files a suit against you for public display of nudity, you WILL pay the fine. This has been tried over and over again.
If you don't want people seeing inside your home, you can use shades, shutters, or even polarised films.
The image of your home is not only public information, it's freely available public information at your local surveyor's office. Also, from public tax records and other documents open to the public, even insurance records, i can see when you bought it, how much you paid for it, what it's current market value is, it's floorplan, where your property lines are, how much you pay in taxes, whether it's part of an HOA or not, and much, much more detail.
If you don't want people seeing you, close your blinds. If you want privacy in your yard, put up a fence. If you want the image removed from Google, simply ask, and their own policiy requires them to comply, but if I want to see a picture of your house, I have MANY other ways to see one that you can NOT ask to be taken down.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
In some places, you aren't allowed to put a gate on a road that is maintained by the city. That was certainly true where I grew up. Of course, that's probably a local policy specific to that city.
Uh, no, that is absolutely not true. I was considering buying a piece of land in the Santa Cruz, CA area about a year ago. I read the paperwork on the land, and road maintenance costs were shared among the landowners. However, the road in question is most definitely on Google maps.
Just because it is a road, that doesn't make it public. It could be semipublic, and with a gate, it might even be considered private, albeit not with respect to aerial photos. That said, I do agree that the people suing probably don't have a case, just not for the reasons you state.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.