14 DAY TRIAL // Google was fined by Italian authorities with €1 million ($1.4 million) after the country’s data protection watchdog received complaints regarding the Street View cars that recorded images in 2010 that weren’t clearly recognizable.
Basically, the Italian authorities are upset that people could not decide if they wanted to be photographed or not since they did not recognize Google’s cars. Of course, the fact that the cars were “wearing” entire photographic equipment on top of them seems to be ignored in this case.
“Cars belonging to the giant of Mountain View roamed Italy's streets without being entirely recognizable as such, therefore not allowing the people present in those places to decide whether to be photographed or not,” the statement reads.
The Street View project has gotten Google into quite a bit of trouble over the years, especially after capturing unprotected data over WiFi signals.
The company faces several privacy lawsuits both in the United States and in Europe because of the project that has brought a panoramic perspective of streets from all over the world straight to the Internet.
Google has said that it complied with everything that the Italian regulators required at the time and that the fine is related to a case that goes back four years ago.
The fine from the Italian data protection watchdog relates to vehicles that weren’t labeled properly.
The fact that Google collected data transmitted over WiFi signals that weren’t protected by passwords has also captured the attention of the watchdog, but there’s been no official stance on this matter thus far.
The Internet giant has already been fined several times over in Europe, including by German privacy regulators. The fine was a mere slap on the wrist, since Google had to pay under €150,000 ($205,518) for intercepting emails, user names, passwords and other data transmitted as the cars were passing by.
The British decided against fining Google, but requested the company to delete any data it might have gathered. Of course, the company has already done this, after never actually using it for anything, as per its own statement.
In the United States, Google paid $7 million (€5.1 million) to settle a multistate US investigation. Last September, a US federal appeals court refused to dismiss a lawsuit that accused Google of violating the federal wiretap law.
Earlier this week, Google revealed that it had asked the Supreme Court to handle the case, hoping it would say that the company could not be held liable for accidentally gathering data passing through unencrypted WiFi routers.