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Google Street View in Brazil

Until today, the navigation system of Google Street View for cities in Brazil is not available yet. Besides being some of the cities already photographed, the company did not published these pictures, what is expected to happen in the middle of this year.

Because of the absence of a material incident involving this system under the brazilian jurisdiction, most of the times the technical discussions about this theme take the procedures, which other countries have taken to face the situation, as an example.

The brazilian law is not prepared as well to handle with some specific civil relations through the internet. Today there is a great effort by the Brazilian Government to approve what is so called ?Civil Mark for the internet in Brazil?, creating even a website to promote this discussion.

On the other hand, the Brazilian Constitution is directly applicable to the concrete cases, reserving fundamental rights and guarantees as shown in the Article 5, X:

?Article 5. All persons are equal before the law, without any distinction whatsoever, Brazilians and foreigners residing in the country being ensured of inviolability of the right to life, to liberty, to equality, to security and to property, on the following terms:

(?)

X - the privacy, private life, honour and image of persons are inviolable, and the right to compensation for property or moral damages resulting from their violation is ensured;?

Dr. Tulio Vianna, from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, considering what the new technologies resources could represent to the privacy violation, even defended in his book Transparência Pública, Opacidade Privada (?Public Transparency, Private Opacity?) the inclusion of the right to privacy as one of the fundamentals of the democratic state of law.

In the special case of Google Street View, there is no illegal behavior if a company or a person goes to the street and photograph what is public. But if this content becomes available in the internet, it could trespass the mentioned article of the Constitution.

That may occur as a result of the not completely efficient method adopted by the company, such as hiding the person?s face before making it public, as an example.

There are many ways to recognize someone and not only by the face. In such cases, when the image becomes public, it could denigrate the honour of the involved person.

Besides that, in a hypothetical case, the photos would be published, and then if someone feels offended, he/she should inform Google about this situation. A consequence of this procedure is that the exception (denigration of the image) could become the rule. That means, a constitutional violation may occur, and because of that the population would be supposed to research if they appear anywhere in any constraining way.

As if that were not enough, the practice shows that in other incidents involving Google?s websites (orkut, youtube, etc.), the company took too many time to remove an informed improperly content, what should not be tolerated when talking about constitutional rights.

It is important to understand that, when the company follows these procedures, they have in mind the damages that this behavior can lead to, what could even be considered as a ?conscious damage? by a judge in a concrete case.

But as based in a general law such as the Constitution, the case could be interpreted in many different ways, remaining consequently a doubtful situation.

In any case, the benefits to the society that Google Street View could bring are undeniable and it represents the evolution of the mapping resources, but its application should be ruled already from the beginning.

Until the absence of a specific law to rule the internet relations and as the mentioned system has not started working yet in the country, the juristic discussion is still general, based in ordinary examples or in some experiences that other countries had.

(Das LAWgical-Team dankt Thiago Henrique Lopes de Castro, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizont, Brasilien für seinen Gastbeitrag)

Full post as published by LAWgical on June 07, 2010 (boomark / email).