Last month, Google admitted that its Street Cars, which gathers 360-degree electronic images for Google Maps, has erroneously intercepted nearby unencrypted Wi-Fi networks and inadvertently gathered data, like those in family homes.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaking to The Financial Times Thursday, said the world’s largest internet company would turn over personal information that it has accumulated as part of its Street View project initially to the German, French and Spanish data protection authorities, where investigations are pending into the revelation that Google was gathering a lot more than pictures of streetscapes with its Street View cars.
Germany is contemplating a criminal inquiry into the practice. Google faced a deadlock with Hamburg privacy authorities last week over whether it would be legitimate to hand over the rogue data. It now appears willing to reach a compromise. The search engine leader is also confronted with lawsuits and inquiries in the U.S. over the issue, but it is not evident what Google plans to do with data gathered in this country.
“We screwed up. Let us be very clear about that,” Schmidt told the Financial Times bluntly. “If you are honest about your mistakes it is the best defense for it not happening again.”
Mr. Schmidt also professed that he could not rule out the possibility that personal data such as bank account details were among the data collected. He also added that the company would organize an internal review into all its privacy practices, checking all of the codes related to collecting data. It will reveal the results of this within the next month.
Mr. Schmidt said that Google also plans to publish an “external review” of the Wi-Fi data collection process, and will carry-out an internal assessment designed to figure out how this could have happened, which will also be published. Additionally, according to the report, the Google engineer who wrote the code that allowed Google’s Street View cars to collect personal data is facing a “disciplinary procedure” that was not further explained.
A Google representative declined to comment further.
Street View allows Google users to click on maps to see photographs of roadsides. Mountain View, California-based search engine titan Google said May 17 that it deleted data gathered from Wi-Fi networks in Ireland and was aiming to do the same in other countries. A district judge in Oregon last week issued a restraining order to stop Google from destroying data collected in the state and to turn over copies of the information.
Mr Schmidt considers that openness will help it win back user trust. However, he was resolute that the company culture, which allows engineers freedom to create new products and services, would not change.
The “20 per cent time” during which employees are permitted to pursue their own projects, for example, will remain unchanged and there is no plan for an overall audit of these schemes.
“It would be a terrible thing to put a chilling effect on creativity,” Mr Schmidt said.
He said it is still not evident whether the rogue Street View code, which one of its engineers devised while driving around the Stanford University campus checking for WiFi connections, was a “20 per cent time” project. He is also convinced that Google’s mission to index all the world’s information is valid.
“You are better off having a company functioning on a set of principles, that you can at least model, than a political process, which clearly does not produce rational outcomes,” Mr Schmidt said.
Earlier this week, the Canadian privacy commissioner announced she too would initiate an inquiry into the Wi-Fi sniffing. Italy has also expressed concerns. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told a Senate committee recently that his agency would take a “very, very close look” at the incident.
Google fell $6.88 to $498.72 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have dropped 20 percent this year.
The Financial Times reported late yesterday that Google would hand over the data.