San Francisco — Google Inc acknowledged for the first time that its “Street View” cars, which drive down streets worldwide to accumulate photos for Google Maps, accidentally collected more personal data than previously unveiled — including complete emails and passwords — potentially breathing new life into probes in various countries. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office is the latest to start an investigation into the Street View project, according to the BBC.
Britain’s Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, announced over the weekend that he is initiating a fresh probe into the Street View project, in which Google sent cars around photographing residential streets.
A Google executive last week said that the company “failed badly” when its Street View cars collected unencrypted WiFi data. On its official Google blog, senior vice president Alan Eustace stated that the company was “mortified” to discover what had happened, after the initial investigation in May, that personal information had been collected.
Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt (Courtesy: Getty Images)
In the process, they “erroneously” collected entire emails and passwords from privately owned computers connected to wireless networks. The breach of privacy has infuriated campaigners who say that Google should not have embarked on the exercise in the first place.
The fresh acknowledgment comes just days after Canada’s privacy watchdog said Google had collected complete emails and accused Google of violating the rights of thousands of Canadians.
“If in fact laws were broken…then there is some serious question of culpability and Google may need to face significant fines,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington DC-based privacy advocacy group.
In a post on The Official Google Blog, Eustace announced several changes to beef up the search engine giant’s internal privacy and security practices.
Those changes consists of the appointment of Alma Whitten as director of privacy across both engineering and product management. Whitten is portrayed as “an internationally recognized expert” in privacy and security, and she will be charged with building more effective privacy controls in products and policy. For this effort, Google said it is increasing the number of engineers and product managers who will be working with her.
Alex Deane, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: “As if building up a database of photographs of millions of people’s private homes was not enough, the news that Google has also ‘accumulated’ email addresses and passwords is nothing short of outrageous. Google must launch an urgent investigation as to how this gross invasion of privacy was allowed to happen.”
Regulators in France, Germany and Spain, among others, have opened investigations into the matter. A coalition of more than 30 state attorneys general in the United States also have launched a joint probe. It remains unclear how many people may have been affected by the privacy breach.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is leading the multi-state investigation, said in a statement on Friday that Google’s disclosure about the types of data it collected “validates and heightens our significant concerns,” and noted that the investigation is continuing.
A Google spokesperson said the company had not examined the roughly 600 GB of data captured by the cars in any detail to avoid violating privacy. Google also said in the blog post that it hoped to delete the data as soon as possible.