British agency resumes Google Street View in light of FCC findings

Do you remember a small problem with Google c Street View service and privacy in 2010? UK authorities have not forgotten: the British Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO) has resumed an investigation into the collection of information for Google Street View, reports The Verge.

New information released by the US Federal Communications Agency (FCC) indicates that Google might not have been as innocent as British officials tried to appear in 2010. Google previously claimed that it did not intend to obtain the data that its cars had collected “by mistake”, and that he tried to delete them as soon as possible. However, in April of this year, the FCC discovered that data collection — among which were entire email messages and conversations in messengers — was a deliberate decision of a Google engineer, whose colleagues were also aware of this. Then Google agreed to pay 25 thousand dollars to the American FCC to settle the case.

A statement released by Google on Tuesday, however, states that its employees did not know that Street View was collecting data, and claimed that it was either not part of their work or they did not read the relevant documentation. If ICO eventually fines, Google will have to pay up to 500 thousand pounds (about 777.5 thousand dollars), and other European regulators can also resume their investigations. In addition, the company is still under charge in Germany, where data collection was first discovered.