Sun, Aug 01, 2010 page11

• Google agrees to delete WiFi data from HK

  • AFP
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  Google has agreed to delete all personal WiFi data gathered by its “Street View” mapping service in Hong Kong, in what the city’s privacy commissioner said was a first.

  The Internet giant is being investigated in a number of countries after the cars, which drive around taking photos for Google’s free online mapping service, accidentally picked up the private information.

  After carrying out a compliance check, Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner Roderick Woo (吳斌) said on Friday he had requested that Google completely erase all WiFi data collected in the city and provide third-party verification it had done so.

  Woo said his check showed the data collected by Google contained mostly fragmented email messages, Facebook “Wall” postings and the like but did not contain sensitive personal data, passwords or whole emails and could not directly identify any one individual.

  The Mountain View, California-based company had given an undertaking to delete the information and that its Street View cars would not collect WiFi data when they returned to the streets of Hong Kong, he said.

  “This incident has aroused global privacy concerns and many overseas data protection authorities have looked into similar incidents in their own jurisdictions,” Woo said in a statement on the commission’s Web site (www.pcpd.org.hk/).

  “To date, Hong Kong was the only privacy regulator which had successfully procured an undertaking and an affidavit from Google,” he said.

  Woo said he had decided not to carry out a formal investigation as the data could not be used to directly identify any one individual and Google had not intended to compile personal information through its Street View operation.

  Meanwhile, Google does not know if the Chinese authorities were behind a disruption in the company’s services on Thursday, chief executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

  Schmidt said that although the Chinese government can “arbitrarily decide” the level of service Google can provide in China, the Internet giant does not know if it was responsible for the disruption of services.

  Google reported on Thursday that virtually all of its services in China were “partially” or “fully blocked” but clarified later that it had actually been a “relatively small blockage.”

  The disruption was the first since China agreed earlier this month to renew the company’s license to operate in the country.

  Schmidt told the Journal that the cyber attacks late last year against Google were a “wake-up call to Google and other American companies.”

  The Google chief executive also told the newspaper that he was an advocate of entering the China market and believed it was better to engage with China even if Google had to operate with restrictions. That decision was reversed, he added, because of an accumulation of events. “Day-to-day stuff just drove us crazy,” he said.

  Schmidt said China is the only country that practices “active censorship” of the Internet, although other countries block certain Web sites.

  The Google chief executive was also asked whether the company was living up to its unofficial motto of “Don’t be evil.”

  He said the company has done “generally well” although it has made a few mistakes, China being a notable one.

  He added that when Google entered China, the company said it would revisit its decision, “and we have revisited it,” Schmidt said.
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