Internet Marketing Specialist, SEO

It was Australia Day weekend and Bill, a 36-year-old skipper who leads a crew of five fishermen in the Northern Territory, had just returned home to Lakes Entrance for a much-needed break.

For five months prior to the accident, the pair had been planning a motorbike trip around Tasmania.

With that plan in tatters, after the funeral Bill and some friends decided to drown their sorrows all weekend and “come Monday morning, I got out of the taxi and rolled over on the grass and went to sleep on the footpath”.

“What do you do when you lose a mate like that, you know?,” he said.

“I know what he would have done if I left - he would’ve partied too, that’s what I would’ve wanted him to do so that’s what we did.”

Bill said he understood that he could not expect complete privacy in a public street but did not expect his embarrassing moment to be broadcast over the internet.

He was fearful that those living in his area would log on to Street View to check out their neighbourhood and stumble across the image of him passed out on the footpath.

His mother, asked for her reaction upon hearing of the Street View images, said: “I was absolutely horrified - I was horrified that anybody had even heard about it.”

A letter writer in last weekend’s Herald, Janice Creenaune, was similarly mortified after logging on to Street View.

Both her parents were pictured outside their house but her dad had passed away a month ago.

“While recognising that Google-time is never real-time, the image renews the raw loss,” she wrote.

But another letter writer, Elizabeth Maher, had a more positive experience: “While others may have legitimate complaints about Google publishing pictures of their house, I was delighted to views ours, with me pictured hard at work in the garden, complete with broom and bucket, thereby dispelling any uncertainty as to who is the gardener in the family.”

The Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, has said her office continued to monitor Street View and would be meeting Google representatives shortly to discuss recent privacy concerns.

Google Australia spokesman Rob Shilkin said Google could not comment on specific images but noted the positive side of Street View, such as the fact that it has already been integrated on property sites like Domain.com.au as a way for home buyers and renters to research suburbs and addresses.

He said the company had taken significant steps to protect the privacy of individuals, including face blurring and tools for people to flag sensitive imagery for removal.

But in Bill’s case, having the imagery taken down promptly would have been difficult without third-party assistance as he does not have internet access on his boat and his mother does not have a computer.