Google back on the streets

Google have become yet another organisation to escape the wrath of the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Since April this year the entire infosecurity industry in the UK and beyond has been waiting with baited breath for the dreaded £500,000 fine to be levied.

It is now August and yet with several high profile breaches, including that of Barnet Council and the Kent Police, made public, a financial penalty has yet to be issued by the ICO.

When Google revealed its Street View cars inadvertently collected data from unsecure Wi-Fi networks, the authorities in Germany, Australia and America were quick to take action.

And while it is not fair to lay all the blame at Google’s door – why were so many Wi-Fi networks left unsecure?? – we can’t ignore the fact that personally identifiable information was harvested by Street View without our knowledge.

The ICO visited Google HQ and examined a sample of the ‘payload’ only to find the information did not include “meaningful” details which could be linked to an individual.

They said in a statement: “As we have only seen samples of the records collected in the UK we recognise that other data protection authorities conducting a detailed analysis of all the payload data collected in their jurisdictions may nevertheless find samples of information which can be linked to identifiable individuals.

“However, on the basis of the samples we saw we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data”.

So while Google gets sued in the US, Street View cars are back on the beat in the UK, albeit this time without the offending antennas.

At least we can watch horse boy in Aberdeen, shark attacks in Oxford and Paddington Bear strolling down Trafalgar Square, while we wait for the ICO to bear its teeth.