Google faces scrutiny on WiFi snooping

INTERNET SEARCH GIANT Google is facing scrutiny from data protection experts after it admitted that it had routinely snaffled information from people's wireless networks.

The firm has apologised for this data harvesting, but it seems that for many this is not enough, and regulators in the US and Germany want to make this as clear as possible.

The INQUIRER spoke with the German data protection office this morning, which told us that the officer responsible for such things, Johannes Caspar, was investigating Google over the issue. The results of this peek, and any resulting discussions, have not yet been released but we look forward to reporting them.

Over in the UK there has been little fuss from the guardian of personal privacy, despite a statement from a spokesman suggesting that usually it would be throwing heavy books at such a firm.

"The ICO takes breaches of data protection requirements very seriously," he said. "Following reports that Google had been collecting Wi-Fi data for three years we contacted the organisation immediately to seek clarification... there has been some unnecessary and excessive collection and storage of personal data."

The spokesman added that Google had admitted to hoovered up only snippets of information, and explained that it was unlikely that this could be used to personally identify any individual.

"In such circumstances there does not seem to be any reason to keep the data concerned for evidential purposes. Therefore, in line with the data protection requirement that personal data should be held for no longer than necessary, we have asked Google to ensure that these data are deleted as soon as reasonably possible."

Meanwhile, In Ireland, where apparently the equivalent data watchdog was a bit more disgusted, the data has already been deleted.

Google has stopped collecting WiFi data, but the damage that saw it take information from unsecured networks has been done. In a blog post yesterday, the firm said, "Given the concerns raised, we have decided that it's best to stop our Street View cars collecting WiFi network data entirely." µ