Street View Camera Records Naked Man In His Yard, Court Orders Google To Pay Over $12,000

Argentine appeals judges on Thursday ordered Google to pay roughly $12,500 in damages to an Argentine police officer whose bare backside was broadcast worldwide after a Street View car photographed him nude inside his own yard in 2017.

The three-judge panel said the snapshot, taken over a 6½-foot wall in the Bragado province of Buenos Aires, was a “blatant invasion of privacy” that humiliated the officer at work and among neighbors, reversing a lower court that had blamed him for “walking around in inappropriate conditions,” according to CBS News. (RELATED: Eerie Google Street View Image Provides Clue In 2022 Disappearance Of California Woman)

“This involves an image of a person that was not captured in a public space but within the confines of their home … The invasion of privacy is blatant,” the judges wrote.

TO GO WITH AFP STORY A car operating for Google Street stands in front of the Vilnius Cathedral in Vinius on June 7, 2012. Lithuanian tax authorities said on February 7, 2013 they would use the Baltic state’s recently launched Google Street View platform to track tax cheats by identifying the real value of property holdings. AFP PHOTO / PETRAS MALUKAS (Photo by PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP via Getty Images)

The officer’s house number and street name were reportedly visible in the uncensored frame, which spread on Argentine television and social media within hours of appearing on Google Maps, court filings show.

A trial judge had thrown the case out last year, saying the plaintiff courted embarrassment by strolling naked outdoors. The appeals panel rejected that logic, stressing that private property is not a public stage.

Google argued the wall was too low to guarantee privacy, but the court pointed to the company’s own policy of automatically blurring faces and license plates — and allowing users to request full-body or house blurring — as proof it knows how to protect bystanders.

“There is no justification for Google to evade responsibility for this serious error … undermining his dignity,” the ruling states, adding, “No one wants to appear exposed to the world as the day they were born.”

Cablevision SA and news site El Censor, which rebroadcast the image, were cleared of liability because their coverage “helped highlight the misstep committed by Google,” the judges said.

The payout — to be made in Argentine pesos at the exchange rate on the day of payment — follows other privacy stumbles for Google’s mapping arm: the company paid $13 million in 2019 to settle U.S. litigation over Street View’s collection of private data.