Google admits to privacy vilation in Street View project

Google yesterday acknowledged to state officials its violation of people's privacy during its Street View mapping project when it collected passwords, e-mail and other personal information from  unsuspecting computer users.

With its admission, the internet search giant has settled a case brought by 38 states involved in the project.  For the first time, the company is now required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and make it clear to the public how to guard against privacy violation in the future.

The settlement also includes a fine of $7 million, which would be small change for Google. However according to privacy advocates and Google critics, the agreement on comes as light punishment for a company they say had become a serial privacy violator.

Complaints had led to multiple enforcement actions in recent years as also raft of investigations worldwide, into the manner the project stole the personal data of private computer users.

According to Scott Cleland, a consultant for Google's competitors and a consumer watchdog who  maintains a close watch on Google-related privacy issues in his blog, for Google innovation ranked ahead of everything else and it gave the go by to asking permissions. He added, the states were, however,  throwing down a marker that they were watching and there was a line the company would not be expected to cross.

 ''While the $7 million is significant, the importance of this agreement goes beyond financial terms,'' Connecticut attorney general George Jepsen said in a statement. ''Consumers have a reasonable expectation of privacy. This agreement recognises those rights and ensures that Google will not use similar tactics in the future to collect personal information without permission from unsuspecting consumers.''