Legal Commentary

Google Street View or Google Snoop?

By TChris

It's fun to look for your house, or maybe your car, or maybe you, on Google Street View. It's not so fun if the Google camera caught you walking out of a strip club, but still, streets are public property, and that's the chance you take when you exit onto a public sidewalk.

Google crossed the privacy line, though, when it trespassed on private property in rural Sonoma County.

Up a single-lane road outside Freestone, Google went past a gate with a "no trespassing" sign and captured images on private property. Several residences can be seen on the property, including an up-close shot of someone's living room window.

This isn't the first time Google has treated private property as if it were a public street. Google was sued for taking pictures along a private road in Pittsburgh. What's next? Pictures of nude sunbathers on private beaches? [more ...]

Google's response -- we didn't mean to -- isn't good enough.

As for photographing on private property, [Google spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo] said the company tries to avoid it. "It is our policy to only gather photos on public roads," she said. "We'll certainly take down images taken on private property."

But once the images are online, it can become impossible for Google to stop their reproduction on other Web sites.

Google needs to supervise its Street View camera teams more closely to make sure they stay off of private roads. And it needs to double-check the images before it uploads them to make sure they were taken from a public vantage point. The service provided is Google Street View, after all, not Google Snoop or Google Trespass.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 26, 2008 (boomark / email).