A little bit of exhibitionism can pay, as sites like OnlyFans have proven, but those sites are competitive, they can take real time for you to build up a following, and the money can be just the merest trickle — wouldn’t it be nice if there were an easier way to rake in a bunch of money from just a single photo? Well, an Argentinian man found the solution: Have Google take Street View photos of your bare ass, and sue them for $12,500 over it.
Google captured the Argentinian man out in his yard, cheeks in the wind, with a Street View camera in 2017 according to CBS News. The man wasn’t quite the exhibitionist the story makes him sound, though — he was hidden behind a 6.5-foot tall fence that obscured him from view by all but the tallest NBA point guards. He’d taken measures to ensure his privacy, to make evening out those tan lines at home a viable option, but the height of Google’s cameras circumvented his fencing. Images of his nude rear, which he’d taken those privacy measures to protect, were then posted on Street View without the same censoring that it applies to faces and license plates.
A hard won case
The man’s image was spread across local news and social media, paired with the address where the photos were taken — his home address. He argued this was a violation of his dignity, one that he’d taken reasonable measures to prevent with the fence. Argentinian courts initially shot down his claim, awarding Google the legal victory, but an appeals court overturned that lower decision and granted the man $12,500 from the tech company. The appeals court ruled that the fence’s height did obscure the sunbather from general passers-by, and that Google had even considered the possibility of compromising photos when the company implemented its selective blurring. It simply neglected to blur this man’s whole entire ass.
Google does offer protections for those who wish to be obscured from Street View, offering to blur entire bodies or even homes, but such a report-based process requires that someone be made aware of their image first — a point at which the imagery is already out there in the world for all to see. The Argentinian man could have requested his photo be blurred, but he may well not have known it existed in the first place until local news picked it up. While he’s since made a pretty penny off his nation’s appeals court, it sounds like he would’ve preferred his bit of accidental exhibitionism have never occurred at all. It just goes to show: In a surveillance state, we’re all camgirls.
