14 DAY TRIAL // Just when Google was finally ready to put the entire Street View WiFi fumble behind it, it all started up again. The FCC concluded its investigation recently and Google published its results shortly afterwards.
The FCC was convinced that Google did not break the law, but was not pleased with what it found nonetheless, mostly the fact that Google was not forthcoming with the information it requested. In fact, the FCC fined Google $25,000 for this.
There were some lingering questions, but it finally seemed like it blew over. But that was not to be as, after the FCC report was published, privacy regulators from around the world, some of which had already concluded their investigation, suddenly realized that they actually had more questions, in light of the things uncovered by the FCC.
Australia's Privacy Commissioner has had a change of heart after the FCC report was made available. The office concluded its investigation last year and asked Google to issue a public apology as well as agree to more oversight.
However, the office now plans to spend three weeks examining the FCC report and decide whether to reopen the investigation.
Things are heating up yet again in the UK as well, as the Information Commissioner's Office is also looking into the FCC report to decide whether a new investigation is in order.
The FCC report revealed several things that were not known before, like the fact that some people may have and should have known about the fact that the Street View WiFi software could retrieve and store payload data from open networks, on top of the metadata like a router's name and location it was designed to gather.
The design of the software and details about how it worked were revealed to several Google people, at least some of whom were in the Street View team. While Google did not intend to gather all this data, it does seem an imprudent if not downright incompetent way of doing things.