Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Spanish lawsuit faced by Google

Data protection officials in Spain have filed a lawsuit over Google’s collection of Wi-Fi data earlier this year as part of its Street View product.
The Spanish Agency for Data Protection says it has evidence of five violations of Spanish law involving Google’s collection of SSID and MAC addresses from unencrypted Wi-Fi routers. Two of the violations are categorized as serious and the other three as very serious; Google could face fines that range from $84,000 to $840,000 for each offense, if convicted. You can download the agency’s two-page announcement (84k PDF, Spanish).
A Google spokesperson has reiterated to PC World that the data collection was an accident and says Google is “profoundly sorry” for what happened. Google also told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that the “data was not used in any form or in any Google product and the company has never intended to use it in that way.”