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Two lawmakers have urged the FCC to conduct a full investigation into a privacy breach involving Google's Street View.

Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and John Barrow (D-Ga.) want the Federal Communications Commission to examine an incident last year involving cars that take "street view" images for Google Maps. They called for the investigation in a letter sent to the FCC on Wednesday.

Google last year said its Street View cars had downloaded unsecured data from private WiFi networks including e-mails and passwords while taking photos for Google Maps. In the letter, Rogers and Barrow argue the FCC must seek answers on the incident from people directly involved.

"Google has played an enormous role in advancing the Internet as we know it today, but Americans have a right to know the relative facts of its Wi-Fi data collection activity known to U.S. consumers, regardless of whether the FCC finds a technical violation of the law," Rogers said.

"Earlier letters and investigations have not resulted in any action, leaving American consumers with little information about Google’s conduct."

The incident, dubbed "Wi-Spy," prompted an international backlash from privacy advocates and authorities demanding access to the breached data. The Federal Trade Commission ended its probe of the incident in October after Google pledged to improve its privacy practices.

Google also refused to comply with a request to turn over the data from then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, now a Democratic senator. Blumenthal's successor, George Jepsen, agreed to settle the case out of court last month, allowing Google to avoid handing over the data by acknowledging the breach once again.

"Consequently, nine months since Google first admitted to collecting this data, we still don’t have answers as to how this security breach was allowed to take place and how many Americans were affected, let alone a credible assurance that it won’t happen again," the letter states.

The lawmakers say the lack of progress is particularly concerning given the fact authorities in other countries such as South Korea have been able to review the captured data and identify hundreds of thousands of affected consumers.

Furthermore, advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, has published a 32-page report filled with details obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and interviews. The report claims that Google has "inappropriately benefited" from close ties to the government. It alleges that Google's influence with the Obama Administration, DHS, FCC, NASA, U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Department of Defense, and NSA has helped shield Google and caused "insufficient federal action on Google’s 'Wi-Spy' debacle."

Key excerpts from the report dealing with Google’s flight operations out of Moffett:

    In July 2007, Schmidt persuaded NASA to do a side deal with a company called H211, which is controlled personally by Schmidt along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The Google execs promised to allow NASA to outfit H211’s aircraft with scientific equipment to study global warming and greenhouse gases. H211 now pays $1.3 million annually in return for the right to fly private planes in and out of the base. This spring, the contract was quietly extended by NASA to 2014, documents show.

    Google doesn’t get any special bargain on the lease. According to the HangerTrader.com, a classified advertising hangar service, Google is paying as much as one and a half times the average asking price for a hangar rental per month, as the NASA Ames lease with H211 agreement states they paid from August to September $226,731.48 for their hangar rental of 65,513 sq ft. This figure is almost as much as Google would have to pay all year to rent hangar space at two of California’s premier airports, San Jose and San Francisco.

The extraordinary aspect of the deal isn’t the money, it’s the fact that only certain organizations with a very good reason get access to Moffett.

“Not everyone can nor should use this airfield,” says the NASA policy. “NASA has specific criteria to determine who can partner with us and whether they may use their aircraft at Moffett. All requests by a private entity undergo a rigorous review process and every request must demonstrate a relationship to NASA missions.”

But the claim that NASA obtains substantial hard?to?obtain scientific data in return for hosting Google’s executive jets is hard to sustain. As reported in 2008, NASA engineers discovered they could not easily modify the company’s largest aircraft, a Boeing 757,
to hold scientific equipment. So in 2008, H211 arranged to obtain an experiment fighter plane, called the Alpha Jet, that could be rigged to collect data for atmospheric investigation project known as Cal-Nex. But documents show that a schedule of six Cal—Nex aerial research programs from April to July 2010 does not include any Google aircraft.

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I wonder what is best for our country?  People's right to know? or Electing people to govt who will do what's best for our country?

In our history there have been times when our elected officials didnt do the right thing.  But we have a built in guarantee that the people can do something about those officials.  Balance of powers PLUS a democratically elected govt.

So knowing this...I wonder if we really and truly should have the right to use internet to spy on our neighbors like one can with Goggle Earth?  I've used it out of curiosity and the results can be quite frightening.  Should my neighbor be able to zoom in close enough to be able to read a tag on my auto?  If he can do that, can he spy on my kids (if I had any)?

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:
Should my neighbor be able to zoom in close enough to be able to read a tag on my auto?

couldn't he just ride by and look? lol