Google fined for capturing a woman’s cleavage on Street View

Google has been fined 2 250 Canadian dollars for capturing a woman’s cleavage with its Street View cameras. Google’s Street View cars roam public streets with cameras that capture a 360-degree view of the Surroundings. The images are then put together to create a service that allows users to browse streets and buildings from the ground level. The court judge ruled that despite the woman being in public, sitting on the steps of her private property, her privacy had been disrespected and that her “modesty and dignity” had been violated.

“In addition to malicious comments and humiliation she suffered at work, the plaintiff, in particular, has experienced a significant loss of personal modesty and dignity, two values that she held and are eminently respectable,” said judge Alain Breault, describing his approach to the case as “European” and ordering Google to pay a $2 250.

Maria Pia Grillo, the woman who sued Google, originally sued for $45 000 in damages, alleging that the internet giant had infringed on her “right to have a private life”. She explained that despite the image having had her automatically blurred out, as is standard for all images of people captured by Google’s Street View cars, her house and car registration plate clearly identified her as the subject of the image.

Grillo said that she suffered “mockeries, derisions, disrespectful and sexually related comments in relation to the photographs” due to the fact that she was clearly identifiable despite Google’s anonymisation.

Although Grillo filed the lawsuit in 2011 with the Canadian small claims court, the image had been captured in March in 2009 and put on the site n October that year. At the time, Grillo saw the Google Car passing by but paid no attention to it. According to court documents, Grillo requested Google remove the image, but did not receive a response from the technology company, headquartered in Ontario for its Canadian operations.

Grillo also wrote in her court documents that the image put put her “at the mercy of predators.”

“This puts me, my house, my vehicle and my family members that I live with at the mercy of potential predators. I feel very vulnerable knowing that the information is available to anyone with internet access. The damage has been done.”

This is not the first time that Google Street View has been fined. In Germany, Google was fined €145 000 for “unprecedented privacy violations”. And in Italy, it was fined €1m over complaints that the cars capturing images in 2010 were not clearly recognisable.