Google deliberately spied on households, claims MP

Published on Thursday 28 October 2010 18:46

INTERNET giant Google was yesterday accused by MPs of deliberately spying on households for commercial gain.

Google has admitted "mistakenly" collecting information from wireless networks as its vehicles drove around residential streets taking photographs for its Street View mapping product.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is now investigating the matter.

During a Westminster Hall debate on privacy and the internet, Tory Robert Halfon said: "It's not good enough, as Google have suggested, that the whole thing was an innocent mistake.

"I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wi-fi details, computer passwords and e-mail addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing.

"My own feeling is that this data was of use to Google for commercial purposes.

"Of course, Google deny this - but, for me, the question is whether the company underestimated the reaction of the public, and many governments across the world, once it had been revealed what it had done."

Lib Dem MP Don Foster said there was "real concern" that the UK was doing "significantly less" about the security breach than other countries, such as Germany.