Austria wants sanctions for data gathering after Google ‘accident'

In the wake of an admission by internet search giant Google that it had accidentally collected data from unencrypted wifi networks in people's homes while its fleet of cars were out photographing buildings and roads for its ‘Street View' map service, Austria has said it wants to make such moves punishable.

Currently, only when such data is deliberately extracted in a premeditated fashion, for example, with the purpose of selling on that data, is such activity governed by criminal law in the country.

State secretary for media Josef Ostermayer said this was necessary so that companies "were not even tempted" to use such data.

In an interview with Austrian daily Der Standard, he said that he wanted to see changes in this regard to the EU data protection directive.

"If there is no EU legislation, we are planning a national law."

On 17 May, the company said that its Street View vehicles had unintentionally gathered communications such as emails and fragments of webpages amounting to 600 gigabytes worth of data from a total of 30 countries over the past three years.

The Austrian move comes as Google missed a deadline from Germany's Hamburg data protection authority to hand over this data.

The regulator had asked the firm to deliver the hard drives containing the data by the end of Wednesday.

Google says it needs more time to consider the possible legal fall-out for sharing such private data with the government.

German prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation for "unauthorised interception of data", while regulators across the EU, including in Italy and the Czech Republic have opened inquiries into the Street View ‘accident'. Australia and the US have also initiated similar probes.

Hamburg also requested access to one of the cars, a demand with which the company has complied.