Among the information collected by Google through the help of the Street View machines we can mention passwords to email accounts and consistent fragments of the emails sent by users.
Google admitted last month that the machines that makes panoramic pictures of streets for the Street View program have accidentally collected more then 600 GB of personal data from the unprotected wi-fi networks from almost 30 states. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, admitted that the operators “screwed-up” when they gathered these data and he took the commitment of better supervising the collection activity.
In an official press release, Google claimed that the project that targeted the collection of data regarding wi-fi networks, like SSID information and MAC addresses, was aimed to improve the Google Maps application for Mobile that allows users to get details about a route or to locate interest points and that operators were not aware of the fact that the machines also recorded the activity from the wireless networks. Peter Barron, said that the data that were accidentally collector were never available to anyone outside the company and that they will be destroyed as soon as possible.
In the European Union, authorities from Austria, Germany, France, Ireland, Denmark, Spain and Italy started investigations, to see what kind of information Google collected and they demanded access to the data and recording devices. If authorities from Germany only received access to the devices installed on the machines, the first protection authority of data which got access to the recorded materials is the CNIL ( Commission Nationale de L’Informatique et Des Libertes ). The representatives of the institution analyzed two hard drives presented by Google and they noticed that these drives contain concrete confidential information, like passwords to instant messaging accounts and big fragments of sent emails.
Google deleted some of the collected data. ” We have deleted all the “payload” information, from Ireland, Denmark, and Austria, at the request of the authorities from this countries” said Pablo Chavez, director for public policy at Google. He also said that the data collected from the United States will continue to be stored because of the judicial procedures currently in motion. The Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to launch a similar investigation, to establish if, on the duration of the data collection process, unauthorized access to private computers was recorded. Internet users from many US states sued the company and asked for moral damages. The group is accused of breaking local and federal laws, however Chavez insisted that Google has not acted illegally, showing that all the collected data were not encrypted, thus configured to be accessable, this representing a violation of the US laws.
