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Woman Sues Google Over Street View Shots of Her Underwear
Kittenman writes "The Telegraph (and several US locals) are covering a story about a Japanese woman who had her underwear on the line while the Google car went past. She is now suing Google: 'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'"
... don't leave them in public view to begin with?
Congragulations, miss. The entire readership of /. will now see your underwear.
Well done.
Sent from my CR-48
She wasn't wearing them at the time, so who cares?
'I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime,' the woman told a district court. 'It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence.'
Even ignoring the fact that the woman's underwear was apparently visible from the street in the first place and it never bothered her. This reeks of unhealthy paranoia to me, is Google really responsible for one woman's mental issues? Granted, this thinking is exactly what the modern media creates, the idea that the world is filled with kidnappers, rapists, and violence. It's ironic that there are fewer murders than ever in US history, the kidnapping rate is lower than it was in 1940, and the overall violent crime rate sets new record lows every year (maybe not since the recession, but I haven't heard).
I know many people are saying that she should not have left them out to dry in public view. She made her mistake long before that.
She is in Japan. She shouldn't have washed them in the first place; instead she could have sold them for a nice profit.
It seems hard to imagine that the woman expected her delicates to stay completely private when she hung them up for the entire world to see.
This is the part that really stands out. What makes you think she hung them up "for the entire world to see"? I mean, what we have today is kind of a whole new level in the public vs. private continuum. There's "private". Then there's "public". But then there's "on the Internet", which is a whole different ball of wax.
There is a shift that needs to happen in how we view things. Obviously, the moment you step out of a private residence, you can no longer expect privacy. But perhaps there is a reasonable expectation of something that falls somewhere between "private" and "on the Internet".
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
... that she might miss out on a chance to sue a big company for a whole lot of money she doesn't deserve, by feigning distress. I'm sure nobody involved thinks it's anything other than BS, but they're probably hoping Google will settle.
There's "private". Then there's "public". But then there's "on the Internet", which is a whole different ball of wax.
No, it isn't. "On the Internet" is where you should assume everything "public" will end up. Or put another way, you should always assune the whole world is watching anything you do in public. This was a good idea before the Internet, and it's a better idea now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really. If something is in public view, it could simply be photographed and published anywhere - without permission. That's the nature of "in public view". There's nothing inherently different about it being "on the internet" in these cases.
The lesson is, to co-opt a phrase, that people shouldn't air their clean laundry in public. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Might not have been the front yard. In Japan it's actually unusually to have a dryer so people will dry their clothing outside on a patio or balcony.
So far, everyone seems to be concluding that this woman is some sort of nut and/or lawsuit-happy money-grabber. Honestly, I agree with that given the evidence shown so far, but everyone deserves some level of defense.
This woman is making at least one claim that can be tested - that she lost her job due to this. It would be rather simple to find out if this was the case - ask her ex-boss if he fired her over them, find out if she was shunned by coworkers over the images, etc. Most cases of people suing over trivialities involve less testable claims. As such, either she's not good at trolling the legal system, or she's got more of a case than we've assumed. After all, Japan is a much different culture than America or Europe - something like this could actually be a big deal over there. I honestly don't know. So, I'm going to wait for more info before making any sort of final judgement.
Someone took a picture of her underwear and posted it on Google Streetview...
Here's the original article.
From the original article in the Mainichi Shinbun, "It seems that someone posted the picture of her underwear on the internet.[...] She said, "If it had been an exterior view of the apartment that's understandable, but that a photo of my underwear drying on the veranda should appear is strange no matter how you look at it."
Again, this isn't just a case of something weird showing up on Streetview, according to the woman in question. Her paranoia is a little more understandable considering that she claims someone took a picture of her underwear and went to the trouble of posting it where she would likely find it. Being concerned about harassment or stalking isn't completely unreasonable.
Some other details that were left out of the English article include that the woman in question is from Fukuoka City in Fukuoka, that she's in her twenties, that she was fired from the hospital were she was working, that she lived alone at the time of the incident, that she found the photo this Spring, that she filed suit in November in Fukuoka District Court and that opening arguments were heard on December 15th. As of December 15th, Google was hurrying to verify the facts of the case.
There was a 2channel thread about the story that referred to it as "MyPantyView," but unfortunately Slashdot's Japanese counterparts had no comment on the matter.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.