Naked Exposure, Legal Closure: Argentine Man Awarded £9,000 After Google Street View Breach
- M.R Mishra
- Jul 28, 2025
- 2 min read
A Buenos Aires appeals court recently held Google to account not for gathering data, but for failing to protect one individual's dignity.
In 2017, while walking unclothed in his backyard behind a two-meter fence, a police officer in Bragado was photographed by a Google Street View vehicle.
An Argentine man was photographed naked on his private patio by a Google Street View car, with the image showing his home address and quickly going viral. What followed was a legal battle that raised serious questions about privacy in the age of surveillance.
The image showed the man's bare backside and even revealed his house number and street name, which soon circulated widely across Argentine television and social media.
Initially, a lower court dismissed his case, essentially blaming the plaintiff citing that being undressed in one’s own garden was “walking around in inappropriate conditions” and suggesting the wall wasn’t high enough.
But in July 2025 an appeals panel reversed that decision. It asserted that the image was captured within the privacy of his property not a public street and called the exposure an unjustified intrusion into his life, violating his right to personal dignity.
The judges wrote with rare bluntness: “No one wants to appear exposed to the world as the day they were born,” and underscored that Google’s own policy of blurring faces and license plates should have prevented the entire body from appearing.
The court ordered Google to compensate the man with approximately £9,300 (USD 12,500), emphasizing corporate responsibility and the duty of platform providers to prevent harm even when content is crowd-sourced or automatically collected.
Local telecom operator Cablevision SA and news outlet El Censor, which had re-published the image, were absolved courts ruled their distribution merely reinforced Google’s misstep.
This ruling is a watershed moment. Argentina, unlike many jurisdictions, provides robust safeguards for private space even those visible from public vantage points.
By recognizing the privacy owed in backyards and patios, and not only indoor spaces, the decision broadens legal precedent in the Latin American context. It also stands as a warning to Google and similar platforms: automated technology isn’t a shield against accountability.
We live in an era of ubiquitous capture, where private moments can become global spectacles with a single upload. Street View promised to map our world; now courts are insisting those maps respect the sanctity of the home. If transparency demands responsibility, this case shows how privacy advocates may find footing even when images are taken from public roads.
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