[URSpider94]

IANAL, so corrections are welcome, but my understanding is this:

To bring a civil suit against another party, you must have standing, which means you must be able to show that you, personally, suffered damage at the hand of the other party. These 22 people can't just sue Google for damages on behalf of everyone whose data was allegedly hoovered up by StreetView, they have to prove that their data was collected. If they can't, then other people could bring the same suit and look for their data in the evidence as well.

Once a defendant or defendants prove that they have standing to bring the case, they could then petition the judge to certify a class action, at which point the lawyers representing the class would ask for discovery to find and notify all the other class members.

I view this as a very valuable rule of law; without this, there are attorneys who would just spend all day filing speculative lawsuits in hopes of forming a class action.

One other notable places this rule has come into play in the recent past: in litigation around gay marriage, when the government refused to defend its marriage discrimination laws, religious groups tried to step in to take on the defense, only to be told they had no standing because they were not being harmed by other people getting married.

[iamshs]

Aha makes sense. So the process can continue perpetually until someone is proven to be a victim. Thanks for the answer.