UK MPs question Google over Street View data breaches

UK MPs have accused Google of deliberately collecting wi-fi data for commercial gain.
It is another twist to events kicked off by the search giant collecting of millions of pieces of sensitive information via its Street View cars, reports BBC News.

Discovery of the data triggered investigations around the globe. Google has always maintained that the data was collected in error because of code being mistakenly included in the Street View software.

The code was created by a Google engineer as part of a wider project to map wi-fi hotspots but should never have found its way into Street View cars, the search giant said.

Google's head of PR told the BBC News this week that there was code incorporated into Street View which was intended to map wi-fi hotspots in order to improve Google's location-based services.

But it was never the intention that any part of it would also suck up personal and sensitive information relating to unsecured wireless networks, he said.

"This data has never been used in any Google product, was never intended to be used by Google and will never be used," he said.

During a two-hour parliamentary debate on privacy, UK MPs questioned Google's version of events. Conservative MP Robert Halfon questioned Google's insistence that the details were sucked up by Street View cars as a result of code being accidentally included in the software.

"I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wi-fi details, computer passwords and e-mail addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing," he said.