Google’s Peter Barron struggles with privacy probe

Google is in trouble with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) again after it admitted collecting email and password data while developing Street View.

The UK privacy watchdog has launched a new investigation in to the search giant in light of the latest claims, which Google has referred to as a “mistake”.

Google’s Street View service was deemed controversial from the outset, although previous investigations concluded that the data collected by Google during the development of the mapping service didn’t amount to “identifiable personal data” in the UK.

Since then, Google has admitted “mistakenly collecting extra data” including people’s personal emails and passwords.  In an interview with BBC Radio 5 live this morning, the company’s head of public relations Peter Barron struggled to fight off claims that Google has “too poor an attitude to privacy”.

Barron passed the buck, blaming one engineer specifically.  However, when questioned he was forced to admit the engineer in question (who apparently knew exactly what data was being collected) is still working for the company.

He referred to Street View as an “experimental project” many times, and said it is always possible to make mistakes.  Despite claiming that the data was never intended to be used and will never be used, Barron’s defence was unconvincing.

Click here to listen to Barron’s interview (Time – 1:51.30).