Connecticut AG Blumenthal to spearhead Google privacy probe

Last week, the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty announced that Wi-Fi data sniffed and collected by Google Inc.’s Street View cyborg car contained “fragments” of personal information. This week, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, “will seek additional information from Google and determine whether laws may have been broken.” The paper goes onto write, “As many as 30 U.S. states could join forces to look into how Google Inc.’s Street View vehicles came to collect Internet user’s personal data from unsecured wireless networks.” Blumenthal, who is a candidate to replace the retiring Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), did not say whether charges would be filed, but rather explained that he wanted a “comprehensive explanation of how this unauthorized data collection happened, why the information was kept if collection was inadvertent, and what action will prevent a recurrence.”Read