Menlo Park (ip-192.com): European prosecutors are investigating Google's practice to collect data related to private Wi-Fi hotspots while gathering images for its Street View mapping service. Google is potentially facing a criminal probe in Germany. Prosecutors in the city of Hamburg are probing the Menlo Park based company on suspicion of criminal data capture.
Italy has also started an investigation following Google's announcement that it had for several years accidentally collected personal data on wireless networks. Italy's privacy regulator sais Google admitted that it gathered data related to Wi-Fi "as well as electronic communications, eventually transmitted by users via unprotected wireless networks."
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in Great Britain did ask Google to delete data related to wireless networks, including MAC addresses and other data captured. However, ICO said that it does not plan to further investigate the incident. Google says that it already purged all information accidentally gathered on Irish Wi-Fi users from its databases.
Following Germany and Italy, the Czech data protection agency also launched a probe into the matter. Prosecutors said it could take up to two weeks to determine if there is reason to start a full investigation.
"A number of European privacy and data protection regulators have instructed Google to irrevocably destroy all Wi-Fi data collected since 2007 in the course of the company's Street View project," says Privacy International in an open letter to EU privacy commissioners. "We urge Google to politely ignore these instructions and, instead, securely store the data with a trusted third party pending further investigation. We are deeply unsettled by Google's assertion that this situation was caused by a mere ‘mistake’ brought about by accidental use of inappropriate code developed for sniffing the content of Wi-Fi networks. This explanation to us seems entirely implausible. Only a full scale audit will help uncover the facts."
The human rights group alleges that Google collected 1,600 GB of data related to private Wi-Fi networks.
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