Cecilia Kang reports:
The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday it is investigating a data breach by Google, whose Street View mapping cars scooped up e-mail addresses and passwords from unencrypted residential Wi-Fi networks.
“Last month, Google disclosed that its Street View cars collected passwords, e-mails and other personal information wirelessly from unsuspecting people across the country,” said Michele Ellison, the FCC’s enforcement bureau chief. “In light of their public disclosure, we can now confirm that the Enforcement Bureau is looking into whether these actions violate the Communications Act.”
Read more in the Washington Post. Sara Jerome also covers the development on The Hill, as do Amy Schatz and AMir Efrati in the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, across the great pond, the UK ICO is getting hammered for lack of indepth investigation of the breach. Josh Halliday reports:
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is facing renewed criticism for sending two ‘non-technical’ members of staff to investigate Google’s illegal collection of data from Wi-Fi connections in July.
Two senior members of ICO staff with “considerable experience” of data protection law cleared Google of any wrongdoing earlier this year after examining a sample of so-called “payload” data at Google’s London headquarters. Conservative MP Rob Halfon said it was “astonishing” that the ICO “did not send technical people” to investigate the breach, which the ICO later ruled was a “significant breach” of the Data Protection Act.
Read more in the Guardian.