After privacy breach, Google pays $7 million

Mass. Attorney General Martha Coakley announced Tuesday that Google Inc. will pay more than $327,000 to Massachusetts after Google collected data and photographs from unsecured wireless networks for its Street View service.

“This hard-fought settlement recognizes and protects the privacy rights of people whose information was collected without their permission,” Coakley said in a press release Tuesday.

Google agreed to pay $7 million to 38 states and the District of Columbia after finalizing negotiations with a committee of attorney generals from Massachusetts and seven other states, according to the release.

“It’s all part of the settlement, all of the different states get a different chunk of the $7 million,” said Jillian Fennimore, deputy press secretary of Coakley’s office.

This payment is a result of accidental illegal data collection that Google took part in between 2008 and 2010, when the company obtained confidential information being transmitted from wireless networks, according to the release.

“Google outfitted its Street View cars with commercially available antennae and freely available, open-source software called Kismet, between 2008 and May 2010, to drive down public streets and collect WiFi network identification information for use in offering ‘location aware’ or geolocation services,” according to an assurance of voluntary compliance Mar. 8.

The company was collecting data via its Street View cars and was only trying to collect data for its geolocation services, but unknowingly collected private user information as well, according to the release.

Google became aware of the issue in May 2010 and announced its actions to the public.  Representatives terminated the collection of the wireless data and stopped the use of the equipment and software on the cars that was saving the unwanted information. Google has since destroyed all of the private data that it had collected, according to the release.

Google declined to comment for, but released a statement March 12 apologizing for the privacy breach.

“We work hard to get privacy right at Google. But in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue. The project leaders never wanted this data, and didn’t use it or even look at it,’’ stated the Google release.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia have been following the breach of privacy by Google for a few years, and have co-sponsered a bill in the Senate, called the “Do Not Track Online Act,” which if passed would forbid private companies from extracting consumer information for benefit.

“This settlement vindicates the investigation begun by my office more than three years ago when we first learned of these serious, shocking, systematic violations of consumer privacy,” Blumenthal said in a statement on Tuesday.

Google officials have promised to strengthen the company’s privacy controls in the wake of the scandal. Google will now have a greater focus on privacy when training its employees and will educate current employees on proper privacy techniques, according to the assurance of voluntary compliance.

“Google continued and updated training of its employees regarding Google’s privacy principles and Code of Conduct,” the assurance stated. “Google enhanced the core training for engineers with a particular focus on privacy and security of data, including a security awareness program.”

Google developers will create more effective maintenance policies to assure that similar issues do not occur again in the future, and will establish an annual “Privacy Week,” which will feature seminars and presentations about information privacy in all Google offices, according to the assurance.

The company will develop a Public Service Campaign, in which they reach out to the community and educate via YouTube, blog posts, newspaper ads and online ads. These announcements and advertisements will teach users how to properly protect their wireless information, the assurance stated.