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Google Street View Violated UK Privacy Law

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An inquiry by the UK information commissioner has found that href="http://mashable.com/category/google">Google violated UK data protection laws when it collected payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks in the country.

In May 2010, Google href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html">admitted it had collected the data from Wi-Fi networks, but said it had done so inadvertently. The incident triggered investigations in several countries, including href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/09/australia-google-broke-privacy-law/">Australia, Canada, Germany, href="http://mashable.com/2010/08/10/south-korea-google-raid/">South Korea and the href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/16/google-inquiry-data-collection/">U.S.

The result of this investigation is similar to the outcome in href="http://mashable.com/2010/10/20/google-canadian-privacy-law/">Canada: Google was found guilty of violating the law, but was not fined and a criminal investigation was not launched.

UK Information Commissioner Christopher Graham had the power to impose an $800,000 fine, but instead href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101103/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_google" >said the “most appropriate and proportionate regulatory action in these circumstances is to get written legal assurance from Google that this will not happen again – and to follow this up with an ICO audit.”

Google Street View service will live on in the UK. However, Google has recently href="http://mashable.com/2010/10/20/google-canadian-privacy-law/">confirmed its Street View cars will not collect any Wi-Fi data at all in the future.

/>Reviews: href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/471772-Australia" >Australia, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336661-Google" >Google

More About: href="http://mashable.com/tag/google-street-view/">google street view, href="http://mashable.com/tag/privacy/">privacy, href="http://mashable.com/tag/uk/">uk

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