Google Data to Go; Privacy Issues to Stay

Wi-fi data accidentally collected by Google's Street View cars will be deleted 'as soon as possible', according to the office of the UK's Information Commissioner. Separately, US and UK privacy policy unfolds and is criticised; and Tim Berners-Lee expresses fatherly concern.

Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith told the BBC there would be no further enquiries into the Google / Street View matter. Earlier this month the commissioner's office said there were 'no grounds for fining Google' because there was no evidence of 'substantial damage or distress to individuals'. It added that there was no indication that any of the information collected 'had fallen into the wrong hands'. An additional reason cited for the decision was that most of the data was collected by Google prior to April 6 this year, when the agency was given the power to fine organizations breaking the Data Protection Act of 1998.

Google admitted earlier this year that it had 'accidentally' collected information from unsecured wireless networks around the world, including passwords and 'snippets' of personal emails.

The breach was first uncovered by the Data Protection Authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany, the city in which the Internet giant chose to launch the 20-city German version of Street View last Thursday. The online mapping service provides detailed street-level photographs and was pretested earlier in the month with a launch in the Bavarian town of Oberstaufen, which had welcomed the technology and the boost in tourism it expects to result.

The UK commissioner's office changed its description of what had happened from 'no significant breach' to 'significant breach' of privacy laws following publication of findings by the Canadian data commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. Smith admits that it had 'spent less time searching than others did' and says the authority had always intended to base its final judgement on the findings of counterparts in countries like Germany and Canada. He suggests: 'It is not a good use of the data protection authority to duplicate more in-depth enquiries.'

Privacy groups in the UK are unhappy with the limited action taken by the commissioner. Jim Killock, Executive Director of campaigners The Open Rights Group, has called the outcome 'a shocking state of affairs' and says the ICO 'needs more powers and definitely needs more technical expertise'.

Google has promised to offer privacy training to its staff. More detail is at www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11797907 .


Separately, in the US, advocacy group World Privacy Forum has questioned the privacy record of the Department of Commerce, even as the latter prepares online privacy action, according to www.mediapost.com . The Forum's report, The US Department of Commerce and International Privacy Activities: Indifference and Neglect, criticises the Department for 'a lack of rigor regarding enforcement and compliance in the privacy programs it administers, and singles out its 'disastrous' policy of 'safe harbor' for US companies exporting consumer data from the European Union.

The White House has reportedly created an Internet privacy task force led by senior figures from the Departments of Commerce and Justice, but the Forum's Executive Director Pam Dixon says an FTC representative should join them and focus on consumer protection. Says Dixon 'The mission of the Department of Commerce is commerce, not consumers.'


In other privacy news, the UK's Home Office has indicated that directors of communications providers who illegally sell on customers' private information face up to two years in jail under new regulations being drawn up by the government; and Webfather Tim Berners-Lee, writing for Scientific American, has suggested that 'Some of [the web's] most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles'.

The man who set up the first web site on a computer in Geneva twenty years ago next month gives specific mentions to large social-networking sites that wall off their user information from the rest of the web: 'Yes, your site's pages are on the Web, but your data are not. You can access a Web page about a list of people you have created in one site, but you cannot send that list, or items from it, to another site.' He also questions the online monitoring habits of governments 'totalitarian and democratic alike'; and the approach of Apple, whose iTunes store uses addresses which look like URLs but can't be linked to from the web.

Berners-Lee says that if users don't stand up for their 'web rights', 'We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever websites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the web provides.'

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.