14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Street View WiFi snafu isn't going away any time soon. A judge has allowed a lawsuit which seeks class action status to go forward and said that Google could be held responsible for wiretapping even though public WiFi transmissions are unprotected.
More than a year ago, Google revealed that it had been collecting data sent over public and unencrypted WiFi networks with its Street View cars.
Google said this was an error and that it had not been aware of the fact until it revealed it. The company also said that it didn't use the data once and that it would delete it as soon as possible.
But this wasn't enough to appease everyone, while government investigations in several countries have been closed, some are ongoing. And there is also the matter of civil lawsuits.
A San Jose federal judge has allowed this particular lawsuit to go further and has denied Google's request for a dismissal.
Google argued that since data sent over open WiFi networks is accessible to anyone with the proper tools, its transgression would not be in violation of US wiretapping laws.
"The court finds that plaintiffs plead facts sufficient to state a claim for violation of the Wiretap Act," the judge ruled [PDF].
"In particular, plaintiffs plead that defendant intentionally created, approved of, and installed specially-designed software and technology into its Google Street View vehicles and used this technology to intercept plaintiffs’ data packets," he explained.
"Further, plaintiffs plead that the data packets were transmitted over Wi-Fi networks that were configured such that the packets were not readable by the general public without the use of sophisticated packet-sniffer technology," he added.
The ruling doesn't necessarily mean anything for Google yet, it simply means that the lawsuit will continue. However, the company probably wanted to get the whole thing over with as fast as possible and is not happy with the result.