Google admits to gathering pvt data

Google Inc acknowledged that its so-called ‘Street View cars’ collected private data from unsecured networks in Connecticut, allowing settlement talks to move forward, Connecticut’s attorney general has said. In an agreement, Google said that the company’s Street View cars gathered information, including addresses of requested web pages, partial or complete e-mails and other confidential data, according to a statement from Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen.

Connecticut issued a civil investigative demand — similar to a subpoena —to Google in December for data collected by the Street View cars. Google, which has allowed Canadian and European authorities to review such data, refused to accede to Connecticut’s demand, then-Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, had said.

For purposes of the negotiations to settle the state’s privacy concerns, Google agreed not to contest that it picked up private data “every day” that the cars operated, Jepsen said. That will allow the California-based company, Connecticut and a 40-state coalition led by Connecticut to move ahead in their talks “without the need for a protracted and costly fight in the courts,” he said.

The US Federal Trade Commission ended its probe of Google’s data collection in October after the company said it would improve privacy safeguards in its Street View mapping project, which involves photographing streets and houses. In a statement, Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, apologised for collecting the data. “As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks,” Google said in a statement.