Slashdot Mirror
Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1
Translation Error writes "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."
It's a frustrating disconnect
What's frustrating is the stupidity of the judge. Quite frankly, a portion of Slashdot as well.
The judge established that they don't value their privacy because they had pictures of their home up on a real estate website and they did not move to seal the case. Well first off, not everybody would instantly assume that putting their home up for sale would result in pictures being on a website, and secondly, they may have not even understood what sealing the case meant. One of the great problems of our time, especially with the move by governments and corporations to eliminate all vestiges of freedom in cyberspace, is that average people don't understand or consider that their actions in the "real world" can have consequences in cyberspace, which have undesirable actions right back in the "real world".
Assuming everybody is a privacy expert and has the amazing level of expertise (that even most working professionals lack) to fully understand the Internet and its complete interactions with the real world is quite ignorant.
In any case, I hear the argument time and time again that if you give up even a tiniest bit of your privacy, regardless of context, intent, duration, etc. that you have categorically revoked all right to privacy. It's frustratingly moronic. According to that logic, if I volunteered myself to go through the naked porno scanners at the airport (path of least resistance, or I had a problem with being touched by a stranger in a pat down), then 5,10,20 years later society can assume that I never valued my privacy and I am no longer entitled to any defense or compensation against those that would take it without my informed consent.
What people need to understand is that the following is not equal in terms of relative power and ability to expose information:
A) A family across the street taking a vacation photo with distant relatives that includes your house in the background.
B) A real estate agent exposing pictures, for the purpose of a sale, on a website that might never be seen and the pictures would be removed once the house was sold.
C) Fucking Google who will provide an insanely well branded and understood portal to anyone seeking that information with a level of ease that would be considered indistinguishable from magic 500 years ago.
Google needs to be treated differently because they really are different.
Yeah, a lot about that case is frustrating.