HDTV/3D TV News
You may well recall that last week, it emerged that Google had collected URLs, emails and passwords via its Street View cars which “mistakenly” sampled wi-fi data from unsecured networks across the UK.
Google acknowledged this fact, and issued an apology, saying that they were “mortified by what happened, but confident that changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users.”
The initial ICO investigation into Google over this matter, back in July, cleared the search giant, concluding that no personal data which could be linked to an individual was collected.
However, since this new revelation has been uncovered via further investigation held by a number of external regulators, the ICO admitted it needed to make enquiries as to whether this information relates to the data captured in the UK, before deciding on a course of action.
Given the fuss over this whole issue, the ICO has come forward today with a statement clarifying their position, and refusing to be drawn into what was described as a knee-jerk reaction.
A spokesperson said: “It is also important to note that none of the regulators currently investigating Google Street View have taken direct enforcement action at this stage, with the US investigation led by the US Federal Trade Commission for example ruling out direct action.”
“This week the Metropolitan Police have also closed their case believing it would not be appropriate to pursue a criminal case against Google under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Whilst we continue to work with our other international counterparts on this issue we will not be panicked into a knee jerk response to an alarmist agenda.”
In any case, even if the ICO does come down against Google, it won’t be able to enforce a fine as this whole wi-fi issue happened before the organisation was granted its powers to penalise to the tune of £500,000. Not that it has used this power yet, anyway.
even so, the idiots with unsecure connections should be made to fit them with passwords, rather than expecting a payout because google accidentally did something.
Idiots having unsecured connections should pay a hefty fines.
These s-heads are the draft pool for all sorts of botnet zombie networks spitting spam on all of us.
Instead of picking on G. law should be passed requiring that all WiFi modems/routers should have only secured connection capacity, as most of users are total ignorants in such matters.