Off-duty cop caught naked in his yard by Google Street View lands payday

An Argentinian cop caught naked in his yard by a Google Street View camera just won $12,500 in court — with the judges writing, “No one wants to appear exposed to the world as the day they were born.”

The unidentified officer sued Google claiming the company harmed his dignity when its vehicle snapped the picture of him in his birthday suit while he was behind a 6-and-a-half-foot-tall wall at his house in a small town in Argentina in 2017, according to Agence France-Presse.

The man argued that in addition to his bottom, his house number and street name were also visible and widely shared on social media and by Argentine news networks covering the story, causing him ridicule among colleagues and neighbors.

A court last year dismissed the man’s claims and pinned the blame on the plaintiff himself for “walking around in inappropriate conditions in the garden of his home.” Google had maintained the man’s wall was simply not high enough.

But the appeals court found that the man’s dignity was flagrantly violated — and ordered Google to pay up.

The man was not photographed in a public space but within his own home and behind a fence taller than the average human, it argued.

“There is no doubt that in this case there was an arbitrary intrusion into another’s life,” the judges wrote.

“The invasion of privacy … is blatant.”

Google typically blurs out license plates and the faces of people who are photographed by its Street View camera, but in this case, the judges found “it was not his face that was visible but his entire naked body, an image that should also have been prevented.”

Telecom company Cablevision SA and news outlet El Censor were both absolved of liability for publishing the embarrassing image.