Blumenthal presses Google on Street View

By Gautham Nagesh - 05/10/11 02:27 PM ET

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) used Tuesday's mobile privacy hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Privacy subpanel to press Google for more answers on the Wi-Spy incident concerning the search giant's Street View cars last year.

Google acknowledged in May that its Street View cars had downloaded a trove of data including e-mail messages and passwords from unsecured private wireless networks, prompting a number of regulators around the world to demand further information on the data collected

As Connecticut's attorney general, Blumenthal was among the harshest critics of the incident; upon his election to the Senate in November he promised to bring that scrutiny with him to Washington.

Google's director of public policy for the Americas, Alan Davidson, said the firm did not download the data intentionally and has no plans to use the information collected in any way.

Davidson noted the firm has already acknowledged the incident was a mistake and is trying to work with regulators to dispose of the data as quickly as possible.

"People at the company were quite surprised and honestly embarrassed that we were collecting" payload data, Davidson said.

However, Blumenthal held up a patent application from Google that he said discusses downloading payload data in order to pinpoint the location of wireless routers. He said the patent application suggests that Google did not collect the data by accident.

"Why, then, submit a patent application for the very process [Google] denies using?" Blumenthal asked.

Update: A Google spokesman sent the following comment by email:

"The technology in that patent has nothing to do with the collection and storage of payload data, and it's entirely unrelated to the software code used to collect WiFi information with Street View cars."

Davidson replied that he is not familiar with the application in question, but that Google generally submits scores or even hundreds of patent applications every year for things that are "fairly speculative."

Davidson said it wouldn't be surprising if Google was looking for innovative ways to provide location-based services in that arena, but reiterated that the firm never intended to collect the payload data.

This story was updated at 8:21 p.m.