Google Sued for Photographing Japanese Woman's Underwear

Google's getting sued by a Japanese woman who has her knickers in a knot over images of her underwear that appeared on the company's Street View service.

"I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime," the woman told a district court. "It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence."

CNET has the full story here.

This is a new wrinkle in what's already a long-running story over privacy. Indeed, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the "Candid Camera" aspects of Google Street View virtually from the inception of the service. Google's high-resolution photos offer users the ability to zoom down to street-level detail for tours of a region, so users can get a more realistic, 360-degree look at places they might go or spots where they already have been.

That functionality hasn't been uniformly welcomed. In 2008, for example, a Pennsylvania couple sued the company. They argued that pictures of their home which appeared on Street View violated their privacy, devalued their property and caused them mental suffering. (The case was later dismissed.) In Europe, Google recently responded to privacy concerns raised by the German government and allowed residents to check an opt out feature that would prevent their homes from being displayed.