Two US Congressmen have called on the Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google, after revelations that the company's Street View vehicles recorded large amounts of unencrypted Wi-Fi data.
Although Google had maintained that the data collection was accidental, last month a new report revealed that the data collection was, in fact, by design.
"In light of this, we are writing to request that the Department [of Justice] evaluate ... whether it would be appropriate to re-open its investigation to assess whether Google's conduct may in fact have violated the law," wrote Frank Pallone Jr. and John Barrow on Thursday in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. "By ensuring that this matter is investigated to the fullest extent, we can understand what happened and how it can be prevented from ever happening again."
Google has long maintained that although the data collection might have been inappropriate, it wasn't illegal. "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," a Google spokesman said via email. "Both the DoJ and the FCC have looked into this closely--including reviewing the internal correspondence--and both found no violation of law."
The Federal Trade Commission in October 2010 also declined to fine Google following its Street View investigation, although the FTC received assurances from Google that it would delete all inadvertently collected Wi-Fi payload data. Google also said that it had already put new business processes in place to help prevent similar incidents from reoccurring. In May 2011, meanwhile, the Department of Justice declined to prosecute Google after investigating whether the company had violated the Wiretap Act.
Last month, however, the FCC released a report that included testimony from Google employees who had direct knowledge of the Street View program. Although Google had long maintained--and executives might have believed--that the Wi-Fi data collection was accidental, the report disclosed that "the data collection resulted from a deliberate software design decision by one of the Google employees working on the Street View project," and was detailed in a design document approved by managers.
