Google faces new Street View investigation

The Information Commisioner's Office (ICO) is to re-investigate Google's Street View service for a breach in privacy after initially clearing the company of any wrongdoing.

Google was slammed earlier this year when its Street View cars were found to have collected personal information from private Wi-Fi networks during the construction of its Street View project.

The ICO launched an investigation - along with a number of other privacy watchodgs in Germany, France and Canada - but concluded that it found no evidence that any 'significant' personal details had been collected.

Several privacy bodies issued a letter to Google in April asking the company to ensure concerns are addressed before products are released. In June Privacy International took its complaints to the Metropolitan Police.

Google took its Street View cars off the road while the investigations took place. They were reinstated in August.

But Google has since admitted that during its own investigation into what data was contained on the disks it discovered full emails, URLs and even passwords were collected.

On the Google blog, senior vice president of Engineering and Research, Alan Eustace said: "We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we're acutely aware that we failed badly here."

"In some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords. 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. We are mortified by what happened," he continued.

This admission has prompted the ICO to re-examine the information. In May it was given new powers to impose fines of up to £500,000 on companies that breach privacy laws.

However, an ICO spokeswoman told Web User that as the intial investigation began in April it would not be able to impose a fine on Google, should the company be found guilty of severely breaching privacy.

She added: "We understand that Google has accepted that in some instances entire URLs and emails have been captured. 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."

Google has recently appointed Alma Whitten as director of privacy, who said in an official statement: "We are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks. As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all WiFi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities."

"This data has never been used in any Google product and was never intended to be used by Google in any way," Whitten continued.