A police officer was shocked to find Google Street View had published a naked photo of him – and now he’s won a lawsuit against the tech giant.
The law enforcement agent, whose identity was not disclosed, was nude in the backyard of his residence in Bragado, a city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, when a Google camera mounted on a vehicle photographed him in 2015.
The camera captured his buttocks and back, and the photo went viral after a local television station included it in a special news segment about the peculiarities of Google Street View in the city of 45,000 inhabitants.
The cop eventually learned of the image while watching a news program and filed a lawsuit against Google Argentina in 2017.
The officer claimed he was ridiculed by his neighbors and that he would only leave his home to work.
The lawsuit sought a monetary compensation, but the case was dismissed by a panel of three judges last year.
Eduardo Caruso, the leading judge, claimed that the cop was unable to prove that Google was responsible for causing him harm.
A police officer was recorded naked in the backyard of his home in Bragado, Argentina, in 2015 and found out last week that an appeals court ruled in his favor, ordering Google Argentina to compensate him nearly $13,000 for violating his privacy.
Google Argentina was ordered to remove the cop’s naked image from Street View
‘Therefore, what we have so far is a photograph of an unidentifiable person, as they are naked from behind, and because they are in a location that is also unidentifiable, since it is a part of the front of their house that cannot be seen by passersby due to the front gate,’ Caruso said.
The judge added that cop ‘shot himself in the foot’ and that he was only filing a lawsuit because he was seeking a financial windfall.
‘I emphasize that none of this would have happened if the actor himself had not placed himself in this situation of exposure and in an area that is not the private constitutional sphere [within the internal perimeter of the building], since he was in a front yard that was uncovered from a certain height and could have been easily noticed or observed by any neighbor, even minors,’ Caruso said.
‘In other words, the true ‘victims’ of this indecent act, detrimental to the social and moral sphere, were his own neighbors.’
The cop appealed the court’s decision before the Civil Chamber and learned last week that a panel of three judges found that the photograph invaded his privacy and that Google was culpable for failing to publish the image.
The judges ordered the Google Argentina and Google LLC to pay the officer 3 million pesos – about $2,360 – plus interest dating back to September 27, 2017, which brings the total amount to 16 million Argentine pesos – around $12,900.
The judges recognized how valuable Google Street View is for the public, but indicated that it was exempt from damages that it could generate.
‘In the app, when the front of the house is displayed, the street numbers are easily readable,’ the judges said in their opinion.
‘Moving the cursor allows you to zoom in and out from the street, allowing you to see inside the house and even make out a front yard/garden behind the fence. It is clear that in this case it was not her face that was visible, but her entire naked body, an image that should also have been avoided.’
Google Argentina was instructed to eliminate the photograph from its Street View and faces a fine of 100,000 pesos – $78 – for each day that it fails to do so.
Cablevisión SA and El Censor SRL, who were also sued for publishing the photos on television, cleared by the court of any wrongdoing.
