Privacy pariah
Britain's privacy police will take a fresh look at whether Google's Street View cars nabbed private personal information from UK citizens' Wi-Fi networks.
Earlier this year, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) declared no ‘significant' details were collected as Google's Street View cars ‘accidently' gathered information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, the BBC reported.
However, Google has now admitted it had copied personal passwords and emails, although it promised a Canadian court it has halted Wi-Fi scanning via its Street View cars for good.
Alan Eustace, VP of engineering and research wrote on Google's blog: "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologise again for the fact that we collected it in the first place."
He said Google is ‘mortified' that personal data has been collected, but stressed the search giant has set up ‘stronger privacy controls inside Google' to stop it ‘accidently' happening again.
Watchdogs in Canada, France and Germany among others have investigated what happened with Google's Street View, but seemed more concerned than the UK.
A spokesman for the ICO reportedly said it had closely watched the investigations abroad after its own probe wrapped up in July. It reportedly concluded that the information collected: "did not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person".
However Eustace said: "It's clear from those [external] inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire e-mails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords."
Reacting to Google's admission of guilt, The ICO told the BBC: "We will be making enquires to see whether this information relates to the data inadvertently captured in the UK, before deciding on the necessary course of action, including a consideration of the need to use our enforcement powers."
Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy told the broadcaster it will cooperate with the investigation to answer ‘further questions and concerns' and stressed that the data collected "has never been used in any Google product and was never intended to be used by Google in any way".
Google said it has appointed Whitten to oversee the development of effective privacy controls into its products and procedures. It will also boost training for engineers and product managers ‘with a focus on responsible collection, use and handling on data'.
Google will also roll out an ‘information security awareness programme' for all its employees from December and has also revamped its internal compliance.
