Google correctly escapes prosecution over Street View privacy breach

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 07 December 2010 10:36

Opinion and Analysis

Australian authorities have decided not to prosecute Google for the 'inadvertent' collection of personal data by its Street View cars. Quite right too.

Earlier this year, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) was called in by the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department to consider whether Google's admitted collection of Wi-Fi data was a breach of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (TIA).

Apart from taking photos along Australian roads, the Street View cars also recorded the locations and MAC addresses of any Wi-Fi access points detected. This data can be used to determine the approximate location of a Wi-Fi device that lacks GPS hardware.

Google's story was that the Wi-Fi related code was reused from an earlier project that did need to record data, something that was overlooked by the Street View programmer.

Contrary to at least one report in the Australian media, the ADP did not conclude that Google definitely breached the Act. It merely received advice from an external senior counsel that "the activities of Google may have constituted a breach of the TIA."

It is not unusual for both sides in a legal dispute to receive opinions that their position is well founded in law.

Why I think a prosecution would have been ill-founded - page 2.