U.K. to reopen probe of Google Street View data collection
This story originally appeared on CBSNews.com's sister site, CNET.com.
Google is facing renewed privacy scrutiny in Britain, as a U.K. regulator reopens its investigation into how the Web giant's Street View program gathered personal data.
The U.K. Information Commissioner's Office announced today that it was motivated to reopen its probe, after information provided in an earlier U.K. investigation appears to have been contradicted by the Federal Communications Commission, which found in April that Google's data collection had not broken the law.
"During the course of our investigation, we were specifically told by Google that it was a simple mistake, and if the data was collected deliberately, then it is clear that this is a different situation than was reported to us in April 2010," Steve Eckersley, the ICO's head of enforcement, said in a letter to the company and distributed to the media. "Given the findings of the FCC, we have reopened our investigation."
Google said it would cooperate with the new investigation.
"We're happy to answer the ICO's questions," a Google spokesperson told CNET. "We have always said that the project leaders did not want and did not use this payload data. Indeed, they never even looked at it."
Google's Street View cars, which were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points,
After releasing a heavily redacted copy of its report, the
While it found that no laws were broken, the
However, since then, two congressmen have
Updated at 5:40 p.m. PT with Google statement.