UPDATE: Google Clears the Air Over Wi-Fi-Gate
Does Google think it's illegal for third parties to collect personal information from unsecured wireless networks? The company appears to have made conflicting statements on the matter.
Google maintains its own WiFi service in Mountain View, Calif., where it is based. The privacy policy for that service warns users to beware of illegal data collection. "Wireless Internet access presents challenges for protecting your information from illegal data interception by third parties," the policy states.
But Google's director of public policy, Pablo Chavez, sent a letter to lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week stating that Google does not believe it violated U.S. law by when it engaged in what critics say was a similar activity.
The letter was sent in response to complaints that Google gathered sensitive data, such as Websites being visited, from WiFi networks while collecting images for its Street View technology.
"We believe it does not violate U.S. law to collect payload data from networks that are configured to be openly accessible (i.e., not secured by encryption and thus accessible by any user's device)," Chavez wrote. "We emphasize that being lawful and being the right thing to do are two different things, and that collecting payload data was a mistake for which we are profoundly sorry."
UPDATE -- A Google spokeswoman offered this explanation in response to questions: "It was a mistake for us to include code in our software that collected payload data from unencrypted networks, but we don't believe we broke any U.S. laws. The privacy policy for Google WiFi refers to both secure and unsecured networks, and it's legal to receive information from networks configured to be open to the public."
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