The voyeur in me has been fascinated with Google’s controversial mapping service Street View. Now we are able to peer over people's front gardens from the comfort of our computers but the lawyer in me wonders whether the many complaints of breach of privacy that have already been made will lead to legal action against it.

Ever since the successfull applications by Princess Caroline of Monaco (von Hannover v Germany) on behalf of her and her family to the European Court of Human Rights in 2004, the right of a person to protect his or her private life under Article 8 of the European Human Rights Act against unsolicited photographs being taken of them going about their ordinary daily life has been recognised.

Indeed, since the von Hannover case we have been used to seeing the faces of children - who the court held had a particular need for such privacy - pixellated out in the press and celebrity magazines. This right was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in J.K. Rowling's case to protect her son from long-lens photographs being taken of him in the street.

Google clearly tried to protect itself by using sophisticated software to blur the faces of those who were captured. But the recent decision in the European Court of Reklos v Greece gives Google even more to worry about. The court held that the taking of a photograph of a child without the parent's consent breached the child’s right to a private life.

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The courts stressed that "a person's image reveals his or her unique characteristics and constituted one of the chief attributes of his or her personality". It added that “effective protection of the right to control one’s image presupposed in the present circumstances obtaining the consent of the person concerned when the picture was being taken and not just when it came to possible publication".

Clearly it will be an important question for the courts as to whether or not with somebody’s face blurred out, that person could still argue that sufficient of his or her image was revealed.

Google has been responding quickly to requests to remove images so even if anyone technically had a claim it is likely that the damages would be extremely small. But arguably, accompanying the car with the cameras should now be a person with a loudhailer seeking the consent of those in the street before the photographs are taken. If the people who have had their privacy intruded upon most severely, such as the man leaving the sex shop or the one being sick, are prepared for everyone to know their identity by issuing legal proceedings then they may well have a valid case.

In the meantime, I anticipate that as long as Google carries on blurring effectively and removing images as soon as a complaint is made, the voyeur may just win over the lawyer.

The author is head of defamation at Russell Jones & Walker

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