Intellectual Property Law

Lawsuits Pour in Over Google?s Wi-Fi Data Collection

By Kim Zetter

At least three lawsuits have been filed against search engine giant Google for collecting Wi-Fi user data through its Street View cameras.

The lawsuits have been filed in California, Massachusetts and Oregon. They allege that Google violated federal and state privacy laws in collecting fragments of data from unencrypted wireless networks as its fleet of camera-equipped cars moseyed through neighborhoods snapping pictures.

The Massachusetts lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Galaxy Internet Services, is seeking class-action status for all Wi-FI users in the state who may have been affected, and is asking for $10 million in damages.

Robert Carp, the ISP’s president and the plaintiff attorney on the suit, told the Boston Herald that he hoped the case would “send the message that whether information that is sent over someone’s private network is encrypted or not, no one has a right to access it, decode it, and use it for any purpose.”

The Oregon lawsuit is seeking class-action status for residents in Oregon and Washington state whose data may have been collected. Plaintiffs in that case seek statutory damages of $100 a day per plaintiff for each day their data was breached, or $10,000 for every instance of illegal data collection. It also seeks other unspecified punitive damages.

The California suit seeks class-action status for all U.S. residents.

Plaintiffs in the suits are also seeking court orders to prevent Google from destroying the data it collected until plaintiffs can examine it in discovery.

Google has already destroyed data it collected in Ireland and said it has been negotiating with other governments to determine the best way to handle data collected in their countries.

Google admitted earlier this month that its Street View cars have been collecting private content from open Wi-Fi networks for at least three years. The content included fragments of data that users sent over the networks as a Google car passed through their neighborhood. This would include web pages users visited or pieces of e-mail, video, audio and document files.

The company called the inadvertent collection “a mistake” and said it was the result of a programming error — code written for an early experimental project wound up in the Street View code, and Google says it didn’t realize the error until German privacy authorities began questioning what data Google’s cameras were collecting.

Not everyone believes the plaintiffs in the lawsuits have a winning case. One attorney noted to The Recorder that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act contains a safe harbor for breaches that involve collections of data that is already publicly accessible.

The plaintiffs also may not have standing for a suit unless they can prove that their personal data specifically was among the information that was collected.

Photo: Byrion/Flickr

See also:

• Google Street View Cams Collected Private Content From Wi-Fi Networks




Full post as published by Threat Level on May 26, 2010 (boomark / email).

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