Couple Doesn’t Understand Privacy, Sues Google Anyway.

According to The Smoking Gun, yet another couple is suing Google for showing images of their house on the Google Streetview.

For those unfamiliar, StreetView is where Google drives trucks down the streets and takes pictures of everything. While it has provided us with some pretty amusing images, it’s hardly a violation of privacy.

See, there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy in your front yard. Let me say that again:

Anything in plain sight from a public place cannot have an expectation of privacy.

The issue here is that they claim they had a “private road” sign. But does a small sign put up by the homeowner make it a private road? Their street exists on a public map, and they list that street as their address – thus the mailbox is on that road too.

They claim that Google is lowering their home value by having pictures of it on the internet. OF course, the county assessor also has pictures of the house on the internet.

In a classic use of the Striesand sydrome, the lawsuit only drew more attention to their house – causing many to comment that they’d be better served spending their lawyer money on a lawn.

Perhaps the next couple should just ask Google to remove the image instead of drawing more attention to themselves.

April 14th, 2008