Internet Privacy: Something Else to Worry About Post-Mortem

Christos Catsouras was not allowed to see his 18-year-old daughter’s body after she swerved his Porsche to her death on Halloween 2006. Three weeks later, pictures that the California Highway Patrol took at the accident site were posted on hundreds of websites.

When confronted, CHP officials said there was nothing that they could do. Catsouras sued CHP, and California’s 4th District Court established that surviving family members have standing to sue for invasion of privacy in cases such as this one.

Although the lawsuit against CHP hasn’t gone to trial yet, several states have already cited the Catsouras case as precedent in other privacy cases. Keith Bremer, one of the Catsouras family’s attorneys, expects other states to follow suit and enact laws that protect privacy.

“Right now, the law protects copyright more than it does privacy. The laws that were passed in this field, in the mid- to late 1990s, made sense at the time. That was the Jurassic era of the Internet.” –Michael Fertik, founder of ReputationDefender

Christopher Goffard, Gruesome Death Photos are at the Forefront of an Internet Privacy Battle, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2010.