The Online Zoom Lens: Why Internet Street-Level Mapping Technologies Demand Reconsideration of the Modern-Day Tort Notion of "Public Privacy"

Authors

• Andrew Lavoie, University of Georgia School of Law

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

Internet mapping technologies provide detailed,overhead views of our world and have been in existence for practically a decade. In 2007, however, several private companies expanded the technology and began offering street-level imagery as an extra feature for their online map users. Google, the most notable company to take this step, created "Street View," which allows users to see major cities and metropolitan areas around the world from the still-frame perspective of a car passing by. These images display with considerable clarity, not only skyscrapers, parks, and private homes, but also-and more importantly-vehicles, bicyclists, and people on the streets at the time the images were taken. To date, American tort law refuses to recognize any significant privacy interest for everyday citizens whose images are captured while they move about in public. This Note challenges that refusal. Given the rise in Internet street- level mapping technologies like Street View and the potential for such technologies to proliferate and advance in the near future, the time is ripe to reconsider the knee-jerk reaction that no one who goes out in public can claim that their actions are private. By questioning whether privacy tenets established by the common law and the Fourth Amendment remain sound in today's technological world, this Note concludes that the rise of Internet street-level mapping technologies indicates that some limited form of privacy for individuals in public should prevail.

Recommended Citation

Lavoie, Andrew (2008) "The Online Zoom Lens: Why Internet Street-Level Mapping Technologies Demand Reconsideration of the Modern-Day Tort Notion of "Public Privacy"," Georgia Law Review: Vol. 43: No. 2, Article 6.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/glr/vol43/iss2/6