Madrid, Spain — Google’s fleet of Street View cars, the vehicles that are being employed to create its virtual mapping service, are being scrutinized by governments around the globe for violating privacy laws. The gigantic global search engine company has run afoul of the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, or AEPD, the Spanish government’s data protection authority on Monday said that it has filed a suit against Google for allegedly capturing data from Internet users when it collected photos for its Street View service.
Google cannot seem to shake the European fallout after the company in May confessed to collecting information such as SSID (Service Set Identifier) and MAC (Media Access Control) addresses from unencrypted Wi-Fi routers.
“The Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AEPD) has initiated disciplinary proceedings against Google,” claiming that it has evidence of five violations of Spanish law involving Google’s collection of data from unencrypted Wi-Fi routers, with two of the violations are categorized as serious and three as very serious infractions of Spanish data protection laws, following an investigation launched in May, it said in a statement posted on its website.
The agency has forwarded its findings to a Madrid court.
Google’s Street View mapping service provides real-life images at various locations around the world. These consists collection and storage of data from Internet users connected to Wi-Fi networks as Google took photographs for its Street View service, and the transfer of this data to the United States. But the collection of this data has sparked concerns over possible privacy violations. The company earlier this year, acknowledged that its picture-taking vehicles had accidentally captured data from unsecured Wi-Fi systems.
The Internet search engine giant has repeatedly apologized for the incident. “As we have said before, we are ‘profoundly sorry’ for having mistakenly collected payload data in the Spain,” a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail.
But authorities in several nations are investigating whether the company violated privacy laws. The company also reiterated that the collected data has never been used in any Google product and was never intended to be used by Google in any way, according to the e-mail. Whether that is enough to appease Spanish authorities remains to be seen.
The AEPD suit follows an earlier complaint by APEDANICA, an association in Spain that promotes Internet privacy rights, over the same issue.
AEPD said that if the allegations are proven in court, Google could face fines of between 60,000 and 600,000 euros (84,000 and 840,000 dollars) for each offense.
Sources at Google Spain quoted by the newspaper El Mundo said the company “deeply regrets having collected data in Spain” but emphasized that the “data was not used in any form or in any Google product and the company has never intended to use it in that way.”
But the company with the motto “Don’t be evil” will no doubt be concerned about any black eye on its face. It has run afoul of authorities in several nations — Japan, Germany and the Czech Republic, for example — over people’s worries that its camera cars have collected sensitive wireless data and even peeped into private homes.
Read the AEPD’s complaint (in Spanish) here.
Postscript: In a similar incident, Canada’s privacy commissioner has announced today that this same Wi-Fi data collection violated the country’s privacy laws.
“Our investigation shows that Google did capture personal information — and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete e-mails. This incident was a serious violation of Canadians’ privacy rights,” says Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart in a news release. “This incident was the result of a careless error–one that could easily have been avoided.”
But unlike in Spain, Canada is not going to court over the issue. Stoddart recommended increased privacy compliance from Google, enhanced privacy training for employees, and allowing Google until February 1, 2011, to delete all of the personal information it collected. Canada will consider the matter resolved if that deadline is met.