• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 4, 2010

The U.S. Supreme Court gave Google some good news today in a lawsuit stemming from its Street View feature, which offers detailed photographs of public streets -- including the outside facades of people's houses.

The Supreme Court turned down a request to take up the appeal of married couple Aaron and Christine Boring, who unsuccessfully sued Google for allegedly violating their privacy by displaying a photo of their home near Pittsburgh, Pa.

The decision means that a ruling by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, dismissing the invasion of privacy claim, will be the last word on that count. The appellate court wrote in January that "no person of ordinary sensibilities would be shamed, humiliated, or have suffered mentally as a result of a vehicle entering into his or her ungated driveway and photographing the view from there."

When Google posted its photos, the Allegheny County real estate Web site already displayed photo of the Borings' home as well as its description.

(The case isn't completely over because the 3rd Circuit also said the Borings could sue Google for trespass. The couple had alleged that a Google van drove on a private road, ignoring a no-trespassing sign, to photograph their home and swimming pool.)

The Supreme Court decision turning down the Borings' appeal shouldn't be surprising, given that U.S. courts tend to back the right to publish information -- even when the subjects of articles aren't happy about the information becoming known.

Of course, there are exceptions, such as when people publish the type of data that concerns purely personal matters and that could be highly sensitive. But a photo of the outside of someone's house typically isn't the kind of information that would -- or should -- embarrass most people.

That's not to say that Google is always privacy-friendly. Just consider the recent botched launch of Buzz (which transformed people's email contacts into social networking contacts), or the revelation that its Street View cars had collected personal information transmitted over unsecured WiFi networks.

But there's a big difference between betraying a users' expectations about data -- as Google arguably did when it launched Buzz -- and posting photos similar to what was already publicly available on a county real estate site.