FCC points to rogue Google engineer over Street View Wi-Fi snooping

While Google got off easy over its Street View data mining case with the FCC — it was only charged a $25,000 fine for obstructing the agency — the full report of the investigation, released today by Google, raises new questions.

Gallery

Google’s ‘zerg rush’ Easter egg and other surprises from the search giant: It’s not the first time Google has made headlines for a fun Easter egg or light-hearted hoax. Here are some other examples of Google getting silly.

The report is heavily redacted and blacks out individual names, according to the LA Times, who was able to get an early look at it. It blames one “rogue engineer” in particular for intentionally creating software for Street View cars that grabbed personal data, including e-mails, search histories, and passwords, from unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

Notably, Google has repeatedly said the data collection was “inadvertent.” But the FCC report offers up some evidence that makes us think Google had to be aware of it somehow. The unnamed engineer — who invoked his 5th Amendment right and didn’t speak with the FCC — told two other engineers (one a senior manager) that he was grabbing the data. The report also claims the engineer gave the Street View team a document in October 2006 that outlined what he was doing.

The report doesn’t appear to be online yet, but we’ve asked Google for access. We suspect there will be an official Google blog post on the matter later today.

Writes the LA Times Jessica Guynn:

While Google continues to maintain it never authorized sucking up personal data, it’s hard to believe the company was completely unaware of what was happening. It’s also hard to trust Google at this point, which first denied that it gathered any data, only to later admit that gobs of personal data was collected by its Street View cars.

Google still hasn’t divulged the identity of the engineer responsible for the data snooping software. According to the FCC report, he was a part-time engineer who was interested in collecting data from unprotected networks to potentially benefit Google’s other services.

Photo via Justin Taylor/Flickr

Copyright 2012, VentureBeat