It’s little surprise that I’m here announcing that Google is getting in trouble for Street View again. After all, I make just such an announcement a few times a month. It seems to be the same old routine as government representatives condemn Google for the collection of router data, taking pictures that people may not want to have displayed on the web, not blurring photos sufficiently, not allowing users to opt out of having photos taken, and so on and so forth. What makes the recent Dutch case different, however, is that it may be imposing a penalty of up to one million Euros if Google doesn’t play nice.
The concern this time around is primarily centered around the data collected from routers. Google announced in May of 2010 that they had accidentally collected data from unsecured WiFi networks using their Google Street View cars – which had been on the roads for roughly three years at that point. While Google has since deleted the information, Dutch officials are indicating that Google continued to collect the MAC addresses of routers.
The MAC, or “Media Access Control,” data isn’t typically seen as private information, but the Data Protection Authority of the Netherlands argues that when combined with the knowledge of the router’s location, it constitutes protected data. Authorities have given Google three months to offer an opt-out program whereby users could prevent their MAC address from being collected. If Google hasn’t provided such an option by that time, they may be fined up to a million euros (approximately 1.44 million U.S. dollars).
While Google has yet to issue an official response, company representative Mark Jansen did indicate that, “Google can’t identify anyone using the WiFi header information, nor would we want to.” If the company shares this perspective, Google may try to dispute the penalty by showing that the information doesn’t provide enough identification to count as private.
[via Morning Star]
