Frivolous lawsuit filed over Street View

This story reminds me of the "Weird Al" Yankovic song that goes, "I'm gonna sue, sue...Yes, I'm gonna sue..." It just goes to show that some people have some straaaaange ideas about what the right to privacy means.

A wealthy couple in Franklin Park, Pennsylvania - an exclusive Pittsburgh suburb - is suing Google, claiming the company's Street View feature, which has street-level photos, violates their privacy rights.

Street View photos are gathered from cameras mounted on vehicles traveling on public streets. If a house can be seen from a public road, how can it violate the residents' property rights if it happens to be visible on Street View? Privacy rights are meant to protect us from things like, say, the government keeping a log of how much allergy medicine we buy. Or banks turning over our financial information to the government. Or forced drug tests. It's the abuses like that which go on all the time that the right of privacy is supposed to protect us from.

This right doesn't cover what individuals can see from normal use of a public thoroughfare. But America has this suburban culture that expects it to anyway. Ironically this is the same philosophy that doesn't seem to be too interested in halting real violations of privacy like drug tests or parts of the Patriot Act.

The Pennsylvania plaintiffs remain undeterred. Of their expensive home purchase, the lawsuit says, "A major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy," despite the house being visible from a public road. And they say that Street View not only violated their privacy but also devalued their property and caused mental suffering. These complaints only show how frivolous the suit is.

Furthermore, Google has a process by which people can request that images be deleted if they have a good enough reason. But apparently the plaintiffs opted to skip this step and dive straight into lawsuit mode. They claim removing the image now won't satisfy them.

As a longtime progressive populist, I'm skeptical of any defense a large business may offer in a lawsuit. But this sounds almost like a moral panic suit, like when Jack Thompson sues over a "violent" video game. Let's be honest: Like Thompson and other moral panic types, the couple who is suing Google isn't exactly underprivileged. If they were, they wouldn't own an expensive home in a rich suburb.

This is less of a moral panic suit than a suit demanding rights to be conferred based on one's economic status.

If someone takes a photo of a street in which some houses happen to be visible, the residents have no grounds to sue. But that's exactly what this ridiculous case is all about.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080404/ap_on_hi_te/google_photo_lawsuit)