How Google crossed the creepy line

Shane Richmond - When Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said that his company’s policy was “to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it” he will have provoked more than a few shudders. Schmidt’s remarks, made in an American magazine earlier this month, come with the company fighting privacy battles across the world.

The latest development, last week, saw Google admit that it had been collecting emails, passwords and web addresses from wireless networks across Britain. The data was collected by Google’s Street View cars, which traverse streets across the globe taking photographs that Google uses in its mapping services. Google apologised and a spokesman said that the company had not collected the data intentionally. “We are mortified by what happened,” said Alan Eustace, Google’s vice-president of engineering and research.

Nevertheless, Google’s critics see this as another step over “the creepy line” and the Information Commissioner’s Office says that it will reopen its investigation into Google’s collection of wifi data.

It is the latest in a long series of complaints about Google Street View. The faces of people who appear in Street View images are now blurred after criticism from privacy campaigners. Defence and security experts have warned of the danger of photographing sensitive sites and Google has been in protracted negotiations with the EU about the length of time that it retains photographs. Negotiations can only get you so far, however. Last year, the people of Broughton, in Buckinghamshire, formed a human barrier to stop Google’s Street View car from entering their village.

Street View is just one part of Google’s vast empire of data about us and our habits. Its search engine stores information on what you search for online, even if you are not logged in to a Google account, and Google scans the text of emails sent by Gmail users and delivers adverts based on the content. Turn on Google Latitude, the company’s location tracking app, and it will know where you are, too. ...

via How Google crossed the creepy line - Telegraph.