Connecticut attorney general takes legal action to get Street View data from Google
Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal said Friday that his office was taking legal action to force Google Inc. to turn over consumer data that the Internet search engine has said it inadvertently collected while operating its Street View service.
The legal action is in the form of a “civil investigative demand,” essentially a subpoena, Blumenthal’s office said.
“Verifying Google’s data snare is crucial to assessing a penalty and assuring no repeat,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
Blumenthal, a Democratic U.S. senator-elect, said Google had allowed international regulators to review the data, which includes passwords and entire e-mails. But Google has refused to allow Blumenthal to review it.
Google caused an international uproar when it was revealed that it had collected and stored user data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks taken by its fleet of cars that take photographs for its Street View mapping service. Google says the data collection was a mistake.
“As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks,” Google said in a statement. “As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities.”
