06-05-2010, 04:48 PM
Quote:SEARCH ENGINE OUTFIT Google has changed its mind and will now hand over to European countries all the personal data it collected using its Street View cars to sniff WiFi networks.
A Google spokesman said that the data should be handed over within a matter of days. This is a change from last week when the outfit was arguing with a privacy regulator at the German city of Hamburg, who wanted access to the data.
At the time Google said that it wasn't sure that handing over the data would be legal. After all if collecting personal data was bad, then giving people's personal details to the government would probably make matters worse.
Google said that it wanted to cooperate with the requests, but since granting access to payload data created legal challenges in Germany that it needed to review, it was continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available.
Well now it seems that all those problems have been worked out and Google can tell the EU governments everything it gathered about you when it snuffled your WiFi network.
The Financial Times said that the company plans to hand over data to German, French and Spanish authorities. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the FT that it was clear that the company screwed up.
It is now facing all sorts of lawsuits and other regulatory unpleasantness elsewhere, too.
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