Ottawa, Canada — Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said on Tuesday that she has initiated an inquiry into Google’s inadvertent collection of personal data from unsecured WiFi networks, as legal implications stemming from the search engine’s disclosure that it accumulated private data while taking photographs for its Street View product in Canada, the United States and other countries.
Google has already confessed that it had been collecting personal information through wireless networks. The search engine leader needs to address questions about its data collection and the impact on privacy, privacy commissioner Ms. Stoddart said today in a statement distributed by Canada NewsWire.
Accumulation of personal information without permission may have breached Canada’s privacy laws. The commissioner’s office has asked Google to retain the data it collected in Canada.
Speaking on the issue, Ms. Stoddart said, “We have a number of questions about how this collection could have happened and about the impact on people’s privacy.” adding: “An inquiry is the best way to find the answers.”
Google had at first insisted that its Street View cars are only collecting public information such as the numeric identifications of Wi-Fi routers, but not the private data — known as “payload” — transmitted over them while they were driving by homes and businesses. In a blog post on May 14, however, the company admitted that its cars did indeed gather private information, which could include contents of emails.
“It is now clear that we have been erroneously gathering samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products,” the company wrote.
Google, which informed the commissioner that it had been collecting and storing information transmitted via wireless networks that were not password protected, may have contravened Canada’s privacy laws, she said.
“We are very much apprehensive about the privacy implications arising from Google’s confirmation that it had been capturing Wi-Fi data in neighborhoods across Canada and around the world over the past several years,” Ms. Stoddart said in a statement.
Google stated that the moment it became conscious of the problem, it shut down its cars and contacted regulators in various countries to ask how best to dispose of the data it had collected.
Since then, various privacy watchdogs in several countries have announced investigations into the company’s actions. Canada joins countries including Spain, Germany, France, the Czech Republic and Italy in probing Google’s privacy practices. Last month the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it will take a “very, very close look” at the company’s data collecting practices. Google owns the world’s most popular search engine.
In the UK also Google came under fire again for encroaching on personal WiFi information on open networks via its Google Street View. It has suspended the use of all the Street View cars to collect data, but the search giant has already mapped every Wi-Fi Network in the UK.
Google was asked to hand over any information collected for the investigation.
Google said that it would cooperate with authorities to answer their questions and address their concerns. “We are working with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns,” Google said today in an e-mailed statement. It has previously denied any wrongdoing.
Suits have been lodged in Washington D.C., California, Massachusetts and Oregon by people who incriminate Google of violating their privacy by collecting data from open Wi-Fi networks.
U.S. lawmakers have petitioned the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to look into the matter, and a district court in Portland, Oregon, has ordered Google to make two copies of a hard drive accommodating data from the United States and turn them over to the court.
Google fell $3.26 to $482.37 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have fallen 22 percent this year.