Google Earth Privacy Violation

Google is publishing satellite photos of people sunbathing nude.

This kind of privacy violation is clearly illegal under German law. The Federal Constitutional Court decided a similar case just a couple of months ago. A publisher rented a helicopter to fly over the houses of famous people and take air photos. Those can’t be published, since the privacy interest overrides the free speech interest. At least that was the opinion of the Court.

Of course, taking pictures of people sunbathing in the nude is a much more serious case. We are entering interesting criminal law territory here. Might violate Article 201a of the German Criminal Law, introduced in 2004 as a countermeasure to this kind of privacy invasion.

Update: Damn comment spammers. I got a comment on this post pointing out that there was a case in Spain about privacy implications of publishing photos of people bathing nude in a public space. And more than 10 spam comments. When I tried to approve the real comment and delete the spam in one bulk action, WordPress deleted the real comment as well. Sorry.

Of course I blame Google. They are the reason comment spam exists in the first place.