Germany Investigates Google’s Data Collecting

Germany Investigates Google’s Data Collecting
By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/business/global/20google.html?th&emc=th


BERLIN — Prosecutors in Hamburg opened a criminal investigation of Google on Wednesday over its collecting of private Internet data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in Germany.

The action in the city-state of Hamburg, where Google’s German headquarters is located, could increase pressure on the company to turn over one of the hard drives used in its data-gathering effort, something Google has declined to do thus far.

German data protection officials on Monday set a May 26 deadline for Google to hand over a hard drive from one of the roving vehicles it used to compile its 360-degree Street View photo mapping archive.

The investigation, which will determine whether prosecutors bring criminal charges against Google employees, came in response to a complaint filed Monday by Jens Ferner, a law student from Alsdorf, Germany. Mr. Ferner said he wanted to clarify German law regarding the collection of data from unsecured wireless networks.

“We are absolutely at an early stage,” Wilhelm Möllers, a spokesman for the Hamburg prosecutor’s office, said in an interview. “This isn’t something that will be wrapped up in two or three weeks. We have to analyze whether there is reason to file criminal charges.”

Under pressure from German privacy regulators, Google said Friday that it had inadvertently collected 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks around the world as it assembled its Street View archive. Google said the data, which it has described as snippets of Web sites and the contents of personal e-mail messages, was collected as a result of a programming error. The company has offered to destroy the data, in conjunction with regulators.

Kay Oberbeck, a Google spokesman in Hamburg, said Wednesday that “as we have said since we made our announcement last week, we are working with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns.”

Google so far has not agreed to turn over one of its hard drives to German authorities for inspection. Under German law, a conviction for illegal data-gathering carries a two-year prison sentence or a fine.

Mr. Möllers said it was too early to say whether prosecutors would ask Google for one of the hard drives as part of the criminal investigation.

Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection supervisor who made the original request to Google to inspect one of the hard drives, said he met Wednesday with Google executives to discuss Street View and the improperly obtained data.

Mr. Caspar said the Google representatives did not commit to supplying one of the hard drives by the deadline next Wednesday. “But they assured me that we would have an answer to our request by then,” Mr. Caspar said in an interview. “It can be that this separate criminal investigation may increase their readiness to meet our request. I don’t know.”

While accepted in Britain and France, Street View has encountered resistance in Germany and Switzerland, where privacy laws are stricter than in the rest of Europe and opposition to the 360-degree photo archive has been growing.

F.T.C. Query on Google

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Two lawmakers who are co-chairmen of the Congressional Privacy Caucus asked the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday if Google broke the law in collecting Wi-Fi and other Internet data while taking photographs for its Street View product.

Representatives Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, and Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, wrote to the F.T.C. chairman to ask if the agency was looking into the data collection, which Google has said was “a mistake.”

Google said on Friday that its fleet of cars responsible for photographing streets around the world had for several years collected personal information sent by consumers over wireless networks.

Mr. Barton and Mr. Markey asked the F.T.C. how the data had been collected and stored, and who had access to it. They also asked if the data collection had violated a reasonable expectation of privacy and if the practice had been deceptive or illegal.

The F.T.C. confirmed receipt of the letter, but had no immediate comment.


Wider European Scrutiny of Google on Privacy
By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/technology/22streetview.html?th&emc=th


BERLIN — In a sign that Europe is taking an increasingly unified line on Internet privacy, six European countries have joined Germany in asking Google to preserve data it improperly collected from unsecured wireless networks as part of Street View, its photo-mapping service, the company said Friday.

The growing number of requests by the European countries, and Hong Kong, raised the possibility that Google might be required to disclose for the first time exactly what its employees collected in 33 countries while compiling Street View. And that in turn increased the likelihood that Google, the world’s largest search engine company, could face fines or other penalties.

The company said Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland had asked it to retain the data collected from their citizens. Google has described the data as fragments of Web pages and e-mail messages recorded by its roving fleet of specially equipped vehicles.

In a statement, Google said that it had received the multiple requests to retain the Wi-Fi data and that privacy officials in Denmark and Austria, by contrast, had joined Ireland, in asking the search engine to destroy data collected in their countries.

Google did not say in its statement whether it was prepared go a step further and turn over the data it had collected to individual regulators.

Peter Church, a privacy lawyer at Linklaters in London, said it was likely that the countries asking Google to refrain from destroying their data would eventually seek to inspect the data themselves.

“I would imagine that they would want to have a look at this information,” Mr. Church said. “Was Google just looking at the headers of the Wi-Fi information or were they looking at the content? I would imagine that the authorities in these jurisdictions will now look at the information. They will want to know whether or not it was tiny snippets of information, as Google has said, or something more.”

Hana Stepankova, a spokeswoman for the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection, confirmed that her office was investigating. She said it was too early to say whether regulators would ask to see the Czech data.

“In a country like the Czech Republic, which has had a history of secret surveillance before 1989, people are still very sensitive about anyone trying to listen in to their private business,” Ms. Stepankova said.

Google attributed its decision to withhold the data as a concession to “uncertainty” among privacy regulators, one of which, Google said, initially asked it to delete, and then retain, its data. Google did not identify the country.

“Following requests from the Irish, Danish and Austrian data protection authorities, we can confirm that we have deleted payload data identified as coming from those countries,” Google said Friday. “We can also confirm that, as requested, we are keeping data from Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Given that there is some uncertainty about deletion generally, for example one data protection authority changed its instruction from delete to retain in the last 24 hours, we think it makes sense to keep the remaining country data while we work through these issues.”

Pressure from the German data supervisor in Hamburg, where Google Germany is based, prompted Google on May 14 to disclose that it had collected 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured Wi-FI networks in 33 countries and Hong Kong for Street View.

So far, only the data protection supervisor in Hamburg, Johannes Caspar, and the privacy commissioner in Hong Kong, Roderick B. Woo, have asked for copies of the data collected in their countries.

Google has said that it collected the data inadvertently through a programming error.

But fallout from the disclosure continued to reverberate. In the United States on Thursday, the chairman Federal Trade Commission said it would conduct an informal review of Google’s collection efforts. Regulators in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are also questioning the company.

In Portland, Ore., two computer users filed a class-action suit in United States District Court against Google on behalf of residents in Oregon and Washington.