Monday, June 30, 2014

Issues in Privacy: Google's Appeal Rejected by the Supreme Court

Breaking news for Google:

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Google today. According to Businessweek, it left the company to "face lawsuits accusing it of violating a federal wiretapping law by secretly collecting personal data while developing its Street View maps." Google was accused "of gathering emails, user names and passwords while using a fleet of camera-equipped vehicles that drove around the country to collect images for Street View."

Last year, Google already experienced another settlement of $7 million worth with 38 states over the data collection. The current class-action suit, Google v. Joffe, was filed by individuals whose information was collected by Goggle. For this ruling, the court upheld a previous ruling that ruled that protection under the U.S. Wiretap Act applies to information found on unencrypted in-home WiFi Networks.

In addition to the current class-action suit, Google is facing privacy problems in other countries in which it also collected Street View data. It will be interesting how Google will fight through this.

Read more at: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/supreme-court-rejects-googles-appeal-158667

No comments: