Two of Google's chief congressional critics on Wednesday called on federal regulators to investigate whether the search company's inadvertent collection of Street View Wi-Fi data violates the law.
In a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz, they prod the agency to evaluate whether accidental capture of brief snippets of Wi-Fi traffic is an "unfair or deceptive act" that has harmed consumers.
On Friday, Google acknowledged that its Street View cars had unintentionally intercepted fragments of data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks for periods of 200 milliseconds at a time. Google's blog post said it was code that should not have ended up in the final product, and that it was contacting regulators and deleting the data.
A Google representative on Wednesday declined to discuss details of any conversations with the FTC, instead saying: "We are working with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns."
An FTC representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google has posted a letter (PDF) from iSEC Partners, a San Francisco-based security-auditing firm, witnessing the physical destruction of four hard drives, with data from Street View cars from Ireland. The Irish Data Protection Authority had asked that those records be destroyed; the United Kingdom's government has made a similar request.
The letter to the FTC (PDF) was signed by Reps. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican.
Barton has assailed Google's purchase of DoubleClick on privacy grounds but supported efforts by the Bush administration to expand government surveillance.
Markey, on the other hand, has a history of attempting to regulate Internet companies' data collection practices, including proposing that Web sites delete information about visitors. He has also talked about introducing a broader privacy bill and grilled the now-defunct NebuAd company on privacy.