Regulators in Spain and Canada blasted Google after investigations into the internet giant's Wifi data collection incident earlier this year.
Spain's Data Protection Authority said on Monday that it has initiated disciplinary action against Google after an inquiry confirmed that the company has defied Spain's data protection act by collecting Wifi content for Street View.
The disciplinary action could bring penalties ranging from 60,000-600,000 Euros per offense, depending on the perceived severity of the violations.
The Spanish investigators found out that the Wifi data collected by Google included names, email addresses and account information, as well as some social networking and IM account passwords and information. The content also included MAC address names and SSID network names, which sometimes can be used to identify devices and their locations.
Jennifer Stoddart, the Canadian privacy commissioner, said on Tuesday that an inquiry by her department discovered that Google defied Canada's privacy laws because of the company's poor oversight and an engineer's careless mistake.
"Our investigation shows that Google did capture personal information -- and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete e-mails," said a statement from Stoddart. "This incident was a serious violation of Canadians’ privacy rights. The impact of new and rapidly evolving technologies on modern life is undeniably exciting. However, the consequences for people can be grave if the potential privacy implications aren't properly considered at the development stage of these new technologies".
Google
has repeatedly apologized for the incident and has been contrite. But
it still faces legal action both in the United States and abroad.
