Nearly three years ago, we did mention how Google’s Street View came under fire for the invasion of privacy when their Street View vehicles went around Germany, and it seems that the long arm of the law (which is apparently slow, too) has finally caught up with Google. German data protection officials have slapped Google with a 145,000 Euro ($189,000) fine for the unauthorized collection of data traveling over Wi-Fi networks using their Street View cars. Of course, that fine is but pocket change for a company of Google’s size, so it is not going to cause a dent in their next quarterly results, so no worries there if you are a Google stockholder.
Well, at least Google did own up to privacy violation in their Street View mapping project, and mentioned in a statement, “We work hard to get privacy right at Google. But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue. The project leaders never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it. We cooperated fully with the Hamburg DPA throughout its investigation.”
Over in France, Google too, was slapped with a fine of 100,000 Euros due to a similar “crime”.
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