A Google engineer who had written the software code capable of gathering personal data from people’s home wireless networks had at least told two other colleagues about the data gathering within the Street View project, according a new report.
According to the US Federal Communications Commission ‘s (FCC) report company’s Street View cars to capture personal data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks.
The report was redacted by FCC when it released it two weeks ago and Google has released the report itself with only employee names blacked out.
Google spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker told LA Times that the company decided to voluntarily make the entire document available except for the names of individuals.
"While we disagree with some of the statements made in the document, we agree with the FCC’s conclusion that we did not break the law,"Hazelbaker said.
"We hope that we can now put this matter behind us."
FCC has capped its 17-month probe into Google’s Street View project and concluded that the company broke no laws but had obstructed its investigation for which the company has been fined $25000.
According to the report, "Engineer Doe intended to collect, store and review payload data for possible use in other Google projects."
"Nevertheless, managers of the Street View project and other Google employees who worked on Street View have uniformly asserted in declarations and interviews that they did not learn the Street View cars were collecting payload data until April or May 2010," the report revealed.
During FCC’s investigation, the engineer invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to testify.
For more than two years, Google’s Street View cars collected names, addresses, telephone numbers, URLs, passwords, e-mail, text messages, medical records, video and audio files, and other information from Internet users in the US.
When the scandal came to light, Google initially denied it had intercepted the data.
