frontpage - 3:23 pm on Jun 6, 2010 (gmt 0)

PR Disaster in the making once these cases hit the courts and discovery is granted to see what Google was really up to.

[pcworld.com...]

Nearly three weeks after admitting that it had sniffed sensitive data from open wireless networks around the world, Google is now facing at least seven U.S. class-action lawsuits over its practice. The first lawsuit was filed on May 17 on behalf of Vicki Van Valin of Oregon and Neil Mertz of Washington. Since then, the lawsuits haven't stopped coming. Google is now facing two more cases in California courts, one in Illinois, two in Washington, D.C., and another in Florida, brought by Internet service provider Galaxy Internet Services. The lawsuits claim that Google violated federal wiretapping laws by sniffing wireless traffic -- including the content of e-mails and Web-surfing activity -- with its Google Street View cars. The specially equipped cars drive public streets, taking photographs and recording GPS coordinates to create Street View, a Google map product made up of photographs.

[edited by: engine at 8:27 am (utc) on Jun 7, 2010]
[edit reason] added attribution link [/edit]