14 DAY TRIAL // Last year Google revealed that it had, unknowingly and unwillingly the company says, that it had collected personal data with its WiFi-equipped Street View cars.
It's still paying for the mistake today, it has now revealed the conclusion of the affair in New Zealand and the findings of a Privacy Impact Assessment it was ordered to carry out.
"You may remember that our ultimate goal was to delete the payload data. We can report that this was completed in February under independent supervision," Google's Alan Eustace wrote on the company's New Zealand blog.
"Second, one of the commitments we made to the Commissioner was to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) on any further Street View activities in New Zealand. Today we are publishing that PIA," he said.
The New Zealand privacy commissioner concluded the investigation over the matter late last year, saying that Google did indeed breach privacy laws.
No penalties were issued, though, but the commissioner said that Google should have been more open about the type of data it was collecting with its cars.
Google promised to clean up its act and also to carry out a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) of its Street View program as it is today. The report (PDF) has now been made available.
Google also said that the payload data from open WiFi networks it gathered in the country has been deleted.
The company also offered a recap of what it has done after the issue was revealed. All of this is available in the PIA as well. Google has stopped gathering any WiFi data immediately after the issue was discovered and will not do so moving forward.
The company also reiterated some of the steps it takes to protect privacy in Street View. None of the images are real time, most are several months old.
People's faces and car number plates are blurred before showing up on the site, though the algorithm is not perfect and errors occur. When they do happen, Google Maps has a "Report a Problem" link through which users can request that certain images be removed.