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The Information Commissioner Office (ICO) of the United Kingdom has cleared Google’s Street View division of charges related to collection of personal data from wi-fi networks.
Earlier this year, an investigation by data protection authorities in Germany brought to light the gathering of personal data. Street View was in the process of adding images to physical locations and public domain wi-fi hotspots were scanned for gathering location specific information. This included private data from unprotected wi-fi networks.
When news broke, Google declared that no personal information was collected and that the mass of data would only be used for location resolution. The ICO statement was welcomed by Google. The ICO also declared that it would be watching the progress of the cases in other countries and any new information would be scrutinized.
Google has apologized for the data gathering and had announced earlier that no more wi-fi data would be included in the Street View logs. The move by the UK is the first in what is expected to be a long chain. Google is still under investigation in many countries, including Germany, the US and Australia.