Google engineer to scoop up wireless users' personal information

A Google engineer told others at the company about his plan to scoop up personal information from wireless-network users as specially equipped cars drove by their homes, but the practice continued for two years after the internal disclosures, a Federal Communications Commission investigation found. The engineer, whose name hasn't been disclosed, explained his plans to other engineers and at least one senior manager involved with the project, known as Street View, in 2008, the FCC report states. Nevertheless, it says, Street View managers told the agency they didn't learn the Google cars were collecting the personal information until 2010. Findings in the report bolster Google's contention that the plan to gather the personal data -- which included the contents of some emails and the web addresses of sites users visited -- was conceived by a single engineer. But it also suggests that Google might have been able to move faster to put a stop to the activity, which prompted apologies by the company and has helped fuel government scrutiny of its privacy safeguards. A heavily redacted version of the report was released earlier this month. Google decided to release a nearly complete version of the report after the FCC concluded Google didn't violate a US law against wiretapping but said it obstructed the probe and must pay $25,000. The Los Angeles Times reported the findings in the document Saturday. Google strongly denies impeding the probe. "We decided to voluntarily make the entire document available except for the names of individuals," a Google spokeswoman said. "While we disagree with some of the statements made in the document, we agree with the FCC's conclusion that we did not break the law. We hope that we can now put this matter behind us." Google's Street View project sent hundreds of vehicles to photograph city streets around the world so that people using Google Maps could see 360-degree images of the locations. An aspect of the project that wasn't generally known at the time was Google's collection of data about individual wireless networks, including those in people's homes. The data, among other things, has been used to help Google figure out the precise location of someone using a smartphone powered by the company's Android software. In April 2010, Google denied that it was collecting private data from Wi-Fi users, but it reversed itself the following month. It said it had learned that data had been collected from unprotected Wi-Fi networks and attributed the activity to a single Google engineer. "Quite simply, it was a mistake," the company said in a blog post.