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May 31st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda - Probe into search engine deemed ‘low priority’ because firm was co-operative
- Google was handed eight-point ‘improvement plan’ to ensure privacy was no longer breached
By
Daniel Martin
18:47 EST, 30 May 2012
|
18:47 EST, 30 May 2012
The privacy watchdog was last night accused of being ‘caught napping’ over claims that Google deliberately harvested information from home computers.
It emerged last night that the Information Commissioner had designated its audits into Google’s privacy policy as ‘low priority’ simply because the firm’s attitude was co-operative.
This is despite the fact that it had already handed Google an eight-point ‘improvement plan’ to ensure people’s privacy was no longer breached. The revelation will add to pressure for the Information Commissioner to launch a full investigation into Google’s behaviour.
Sinister: It has emerged that Google’s Street View cars gathered personal data from unsecured WiFi networks
The internet giant is accused of having downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from wi-fi networks using its Street View cars.
The cars were ostensibly meant to be taking photographs for its Street View program, which allows users to see images of the nation’s roads as if they were there.
The Information Commissioner first investigated the claims two years ago, when it wrote off any data theft as ‘inadvertent’. But earlier this week MPs and lobby groups demanded the watchdog hold a fuller investigation after US regulators received evidence that Google bosses had known for years that Street View cars had been stealing information.
The Federal Communications Commission found a senior Google manager was warned as early as 2008 that the information was being captured as its cars trawled the country – but did nothing.
Tory MP Robert Halfon said that the Information Commissioner – the British equivalent of the FCC – had been far less active and had been wrong to designate its follow-up audit as ‘low priority’.
‘The Information Commission has not so much shut the stable door after the horse has bolted; they have failed to act even after the stable has been burned down,’ he said.
‘The fact is, they’ve been caught napping and have been complacent about the privatised surveillance society.
‘Not only should the Information Commissioner hold a proper inquiry into exactly what has gone on, but there should also be an inquiry into the role of the Information Commission and the failure to act when these claims first came to light.’
Last August the commissioner carried out an audit into Google’s progress on privacy.
The audit listed six ‘areas of good practice’, but eight ‘areas for improvement’. For example, although Google has introduced training in privacy for engineers, it had not done the same for all staff.
The audit criticised the fact that the Google Code of Conduct does not include specific reference to privacy principles; and called on the firm to ensure random spot checks and ‘privacy code audits’ were carried out across the organisation.
But despite the criticisms, it concluded that Google was largely complying, and for this reason designated a follow-up audit as ‘low priority’.
Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch attacked the Information Commissioner for not being as vigorous as watchdogs in Germany.
Nick Lester, the group’s director, said: ‘Google had originally claimed this was down to a rogue engineer, but now it is looking more like a “deliberate accident”.
‘The European and global regulators need to get together to look at Google’s defence, which now seems to be not as transparent as first thought.’
The Information Commissioner has said it will look at the US regulator’s report to see whether Google had breached the Data Protection Act.
Anthony House, a spokesman for Google, said: ‘We have always been clear that the leaders of this project did not want or intend to use this payload data. Indeed Google never used it in any of our products or services.
‘Both the Department of Justice and the FCC have looked into this closely… and both found no violation of law.’
■ Did a Google Street View car drive down your street in 2008/09 when your home wireless network was not protected by a password? Then email us at privatedata@dailymail.co.uk
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Leaving your network insecure is the same as standing on your roof shouting your information along the whole street. This wasn’t hacking or theft.
– 450, england, 31/5/2012 8:49
Do you work for google by any chance? If something isn’t yours and you take it without permission…..that is theft. The same if you left a car unlocked and someone took the stereo, that’s theft too. Just because you left it open, it doesn’t give a thief permission to help themself.
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So can google now be sued by everybody they have taken information from? Surely it has to count as theft, seeing as nobody has given them permission to take anything from our systems?
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Leaving your network insecure is the same as standing on your roof shouting your information along the whole street. This wasn’t hacking or theft.
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Money talks!
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The Information Commissioner should be scrapped as should all of the so called gaurdians of our society. They have a too cosy relationship with those who they are supposed to be overseeing to be effective and only act as gatekeepers deflecting and absorbing complaints from the public. With the Information Commissioner, scandal after scandal has been laid bare but unlike the minor storm in a teacup that is the NoTW fiasco, none have been investigated properly. The police, health, and all government departments have a trivial disregard for the information they hold on the public but fail to give information that should be freely available.
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This is ridiculous. Google didn’t “steal data from home computers”; they simply sampled unencrypted data that was being beamed through the air already. Anyone could have done it and this should serve as a warning to people to ensure their wireless networks are secured.
If you fail to read and follow the instructions when setting up a WiFi network you have nobody to blame but yourself.
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No different to the phone hacking scandle in my view.
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When one person steals information from someone’s computer they call him “hacker” and put him in prison for many years. But when a big company like Google steals information from thousands of computers, what they get? Nothing…. Rubbish….
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The ICO is, has and always been completely spineless, lacking teeth and any other metaphor you can think off to describe its complete and total ineffectiveness.
How many government departments have been prosecuted for the repeated and massive incidents, losses of data? Answer: None. None whatsoever. Talk about bias.
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The Information Commissioner is less use than a chocolate teapot.
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