EU Mad at Google
The European Union is angry at the admission by Google, the world's largest search engine, that it had gathered private data since 2006 while compiling its Street View photo archive.
After being pressed by EU officials about the kind of data the company compiled in creating the archive Google said it had collected snippets of private data around the world. In a blog post on its Web site, the company said information had been recorded as it was sent over unencrypted residential wireless networks as Google's Street View cars with mounted recording equipment passed by.
The data collection occurred in countries where Street View has been cataloged, including the United States and parts of Europe. Google apologized and said it had not used the information, which it plans to delete in conjunction with regulators.
But in Germany, Google's collection of the data violates privacy law, said Ilse Aigner, the German minister for food, agriculture and consumer protection. Her ministry is demanding a full account of all information collected. The company's revelation of illegal data collection would be taken up by a panel of European national data protection chiefs that advises the European Commission. No one knows what action European officials might take.
Germany's federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, Peter Schaar, asked Google to let an independent regulator examine one of the hard drives used to gather data on individuals.
"I think this is going to damage the company irreparably," said Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, a London-based group of privacy advocates from 40 countries. "Three years ago the company was wearing a halo. But over the past year it has moved substantially in the direction of being perceived as Big Brother."
Kay Oberbeck, a Google spokesman in Hamburg, said the company was in contact with data protection officials in Germany and in the rest of Europe to address their concerns. "This was obviously a mistake, and we are profoundly sorry," Mr. Oberbeck said. "We take individual privacy very seriously at Google. There was a breakdown in the communication between teams and within teams, and we are investigating this and want to take up the lessons we learn from this to improve our processes and to have instruments installed which are really robust to make this never happen again."
Google collected data on locations of wireless networks to improve geolocation for mobile devices. Some cellphones can determine their location by scanning for nearby wireless networks and comparing that information to databases like the one Google has compiled. There are plans for an external auditor to examine what personal data was collected through Street View. Google told German officials that the data it had collected was limited to just two bits of information: the publicly broadcast ID number of the device, which is called a MAC address, and the name assigned to it by the owner, called an SSID.