Google admits having retained Street View data
updated 02:40 pm EDT, Fri July 27, 2012
Search giant failed to adhere to UK order
Google admitted to Britain's Information Commissioner's Office that it has not yet deleted all of the data the company's Street View cars collected in Britain and more than 30 other countries. Reuters carries a report that the search giant is in the middle of efforts to notify other governments of its retention of the Street View data.
As part of its deal with the British ICO, Google was supposed to have deleted all of the information its cars had collected. The company admitted that it still has a "small portion" of the data collected by its Street View vehicles in the UK. The remaining data was apparently only uncovered in the course of a manual inspection of its Street View disk inventory.
Google maintains that its Street View cars' skimming of unencrypted Wi-Fi data was an error brought about after an experimental system was enabled by a lone engineer. The search company has been under investigation by a number of governments, including in the United Kingdom and the US. Google was initially found guilty of violating UK data protection laws, and the FCC fined the company $25,000 over the data violation.
