Sinister truth about Google spies: Street View cars stole information from British households but executives ‘covered it up’ for years

Posted: 2012/05/28 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reports
  • Work of Street View cars to be examined over allegations Google used them to download personal details
  • Emails, texts, photos and documents taken from wi-fi networks as cars photographed British roads
  • Engineer who designed software said a privacy lawyer should be consulted
  • Calls for police and Information Commissioner to investigate new evidence

Google is facing an inquiry into claims that it deliberately harvested information from millions of UK home computers.

The Information Commissioner data protection watchdog is expected to examine the work of the internet giant’s Street View cars.

They downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from wi-fi networks as they photographed virtually every British road.

It is two years since Google first admitted stealing fragments of personal data, but claimed it was a ‘mistake’.

Now the full scale of its activities has emerged amid accusations of a cover-up after US regulators found a senior manager was warned as early as 2007 that the information was being captured as its cars trawled the country but did nothing.

Close links between Google and the Conservative Party were on display this weekend at the society wedding of senior Google executive Naomi Gummer. Miss Gummer, a former political secretary to Jeremy Hunt, married Henry Allsopp, 38, in an Oxfordshire ceremony attended by Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha, as well as the embattled Culture Secretary, who came with his wife and their two young children.

More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150606/Google-deliberately-stole-information-executives-covered-years.html

See also:

Google engineer in Street View probe identifies as a Palo Alto hacker Marius Milner
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/02/google-engineer-in-street-view-probe-identifies-as-a-palo-alto-hacker-marius-milner/

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