Google Street View broke U.K. data security laws « My Business News

Google violated Britain’s data protection laws when its Street View mapping service recorded data from private wireless networks, the country’s information commissioner said Wednesday.

The internet search giant will escape any fines, however, so long as it pledges not to do it again.

Google Inc. drew international outrage after it emerged that its Street View cars, which take street-level photographs to illustrate the company’s popular mapping service, had also been scooping up emails, internet addresses and passwords from unencrypted wireless networks.

U.S. authorities end probe

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has also wrapped up its investigation of Google Street View’s privacy breach.

In a letter sent to Google’s lawyer on Oct. 27, the commission said it was concerned about internal policies and procedures that led to the breach, but was ending its probe because of Google’s commitments to address those concerns.

The letter noted that Google committed to appointing a director of privacy for engineering and product management, providing privacy training to key employees, putting new initiatives through a privacy review during their design phase and deleting the private data it inadvertently collected as soon as possible.

The company also said it would not use any of the data collected in any Google product now or in the future.

Scotland Yard recently said it would not launch a criminal inquiry into the breach, which the company has described as inadvertent.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham was recently given the power to levy fines of up to the equivalent of $800,000 US for serious violations. But he said in a statement that the “most appropriate and proportionate regulatory action” would be to seek a written assurance from Google that the breach would not be repeated and conduct an audit of the company’s data protection practices.

The company based in Mountainview, Calif., said in a statement it “was profoundly sorry” for the breach, adding that it had since worked to improve its internal controls.

“We did not want this data, have never used any of it on our products and services, and have sought to delete it as quickly as possible,” the statement said.

The collection of private information by Google Street View cars has already been found in breach of Canada’s privacy laws.

Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart announced the results of her investigation on Oct. 17. She has given the company until Feb. 1 to delete all of the improperly gathered information, at which point her office will consider the issue resolved.

The Canadian Press, 2010