Recently, the UK Data Protection Authority - Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has decided to reopen its investigation on Google over the collection of personal information by Google Street View project from May 2010.

As a reaction to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s report issued earlier this year into the Street View data collection, ICO has now sent a written request to the search engine asking for more details regarding its knowledge of, and reaction to, the data collection. FCC’s report concluded that an engineer working for the company, with the approval of a manager of the company, had written a software code allowing the Street View cars to collect "payload" data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks in the area covered by the cars "for possible use in other Google projects." The software allowed for the gathering of entire emails, usernames and passwords.

"The ICO have reviewed the findings of the FCC report and we understand that a wide range of personal data together with some sensitive data was present in the payloads including, IP addresses, full user names, telephone numbers, complete email messages, email headings, instant messages and their content, logging in credentials, medical listing's and legal infractions, information in relation to online dating and visits to pornographic sites and data contained in video and audio files," says Steve Eckersley, the ICO's head of enforcement, in the letter addressed to Google.

Having in view that in 2010 Google admitted to have gathered personal data but stated this had been done by mistake and that now the situation reported by FCC shows that it is likely that such information was deliberately captured, the ICO asks now more information regarding what personal and sensitive personal data was captured in the UK. It also wants details regarding the time when Google managers first became aware that personal information was being gathered and about the technological or organisational measures taken by the company to limit any further data collection.

Google is also asked to provide a “substantial explanation" of the sample data sent during the initial assessment of the issue as well as copies of the design documents and associated logs containing "managerial decisions and rationale".

Google stands in a better position in Switzerland however where the Federal Tribunal has recently ruled that Google did not have to guarantee absolute anonymity for people pictured in its Street View service. "It must be accepted that up to a maximum of 1 percent of the images uploaded are insufficiently anonymized," ruled the Supreme Court on 8 June 2012.

However, the Court also stated that Google had to make it easy for people to have their images manually blurred, and ensure total anonymity in sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals, women's shelters and courts.

ICO reinvestigates Google's Street View data collection (13.06.2012)
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2012/june/ico-reinvestigates-google...

Google wins partial repeal of Swiss privacy ruling (8.06.2012)
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jqamDsi-XekvVlZOrHUL...

EDRi-gram: Google admits it was gathering passwords and emails via StreetView (3.11.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.21/street-view-collects-emails