May 31, 2010 by Mark Isle
Search engine giants Google have announced this week that they would not be able to meet a German data protection deadline for the turnover of information collected by Google from unsecured wireless home networks whilst conducting its extensive Google Street View project.
It has been reported that Google are refusing to turn over the information which has been demanded by the Hamburg data protection supervisor, due to wrangling with the implications of certain German laws.
“As granting access to payload data creates legal challenges in Germany which we need to review, we are continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available,” said Google spokesman Peter Barron.
Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection supervisor, expressed annoyance and dismay at Google’s inaction, and explained that the handover would not infract German law. “Therefore there is no apparent reason to still withhold the data from us,” he said.
Barron said that the company will work to resolve the issue and come to some form of agreement with the data protection agency if “given more time.”
This follows an already passed deadline of Monday for similar actions in Hong Kong, where privacy commissioner Roderick B Woo has condemned the company after refusing to turn over information.
“I do not see that Google is taking the matter seriously enough,” Woo said. “Unless some remedial measures are taken by Google promptly, I shall have to consider escalating the situation and resort to more assertive action.”
The search giant recently revealed that through its collection methods for the street view photo archive, it had accidentally accumulated private data in excess of 600 gigabytes.
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This story is a bit shocking. Driving around and documenting unsecured wireless networks is something that hackers would do inorder to exploit internet access or get access to peoples personal information. I wouldnt have expected this type of intrusion from Google.
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