Google Underwear Scandal: Japanese Woman Sues Over Photo Of Her Intimates

    According to the Telegraph, a woman in Japan is suing Google after a photo of her underwear allegedly appeared on Google's Street View mapping service.

   The woman claims to have looked up her own address using Street View and found a photograph of her home that included her intimate apparel hanging on a clothesline.
"I was overwhelmed with anxiety that I might be the target of a sex crime," the woman told a district court, the Telegraph reports, citing Japanese-language newspaper Mainichi. "It caused me to lose my job and I had to change my residence."

    The woman, who says that Google removed the offending photo around the time she filed the suit, is seeking 600,000 Yen (about $7,000) in compensation for the ordeal. "I could understand if it was just a picture of the outside of the apartment, but showing a person's underwear hanging outside is absolutely wrong," the woman said in court, according to CNET.

    The woman also claims to suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder and said that finding the photograph of her underwear exacerbated her condition. "[S]he feared that everything she was doing throughout the day was being secretly recorded," writes the Telegraph.

     Earlier this year, Google received widespread criticism when the company announced that its Street View cars had captured personal data over unencrypted Wi-Fi connections. However, Google's punishment by the FTC amounted to little more than a wrist slap.

    Google recently launched its Street View service in Germany and, within the first month, captured a mysterious photo of a man apparently without underwear--or any clothes at all--climbing out of a car trunk. To see the strangest sights ever recorded by Google Street View, check out our slideshow of Street View's most mysterious photos.