US Supreme Court rejects Google's bid to dismiss Street View suit

The US Supreme Court yesterday rejected Google's bid to dismiss a lawsuit pertaining to Google Street View.

The lawsuit contends that the company violated the federal wiretap law with its accidental collection of collection of data while creating Google Street View.

With the decision, the Supreme Court has left a 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision intact.

According to Venture Beat this means the tech titan would be required to face the class-action lawsuit alleging the company illegally snooped on people from 2008 to 2010 to bolster its Street View data.

In the process of creating Street View, with which viewers get a 3-D pictorial view of actual streets, Google scanned unsecured Wi-Fi networks to confirm the location of its Street View cars, inadvertently intercepting a substantial amount of what Venture Beat termed ''payload data.''

The data included user names, passwords, emails, images and more, from private Wi-Fi networks that were not encrypted. Google scooped up all of this without user knowledge.

Admitting the lapse in 2010, the company apologised for the privacy incursion, which spanned over 30 countries. It also said it  would stop the practice, and not use or share the collected data.

The same year, John M Simpson, consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog a non-partisan, non-profit group called on state attorneys general to investigate Google's snooping, Tech Guru Daily reported.

''While the activity is likely a violation of federal laws, we believe there is a good possibility it also broke state wiretap, privacy and unfair business practices laws in many cases,'' he wrote. ''We call on each attorney general to investigate the extent to which this is the case in his or her jurisdiction.

Simpson added, ''Google's claim that its intrusive behavior was by 'mistake' stretches all credulity. In fact, Google has demonstrated a history of pushing the envelope and then apologizing when its overreach is discovered. Given its recent record of privacy abuses, there is absolutely no reason to trust anything the Internet giant claims about its data collection policies.''

Though the internet giant last year settled with attorneys general of 38 states and agreed to pay $7 million in fines, private citizens such as Benjamin Joffe took legal action against Google in 2010, claiming that the company collected personal passwords, credit card numbers, and e-mails.

With the Supreme Court allowing the lower court ruling to stand the decks are now clear for Joffe's suit to move ahead.

The court rejected Google's argument that unencrypted information floating around on wireless networks was fair game.