Google faces landmark fine over emails and passwords

LONDON - Google could be the first company to incur heavy fines under British privacy laws, after admitting to downloading private emails and passwords.

Britain's Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, announced yesterday that he was launching a new investigation into the Street View project, in which Google sent cars around photographing residential areas. In the process, they "mistakenly" collected emails and passwords from private computers on wireless networks.

Alex Deane, the director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: "As if building up a database of photographs of millions of people's private homes wasn't enough, the news that Google has also harvested email addresses and passwords is nothing short of outrageous. Google must launch an urgent investigation as to how this gross invasion of privacy was allowed to happen."

Six months ago, Graham was granted new powers by the outgoing Labour Government, including the authority to hand out fines of up to £500,000 ($1.04 million) for breaches of privacy.

Although Google, which has an annual turnover of almost £14 billion, could easily absorb the fine, the publicity would be highly embarrassing for a company founded on the informal corporate motto "don't be evil".

Google apologised for the breach and said it was tightening up internal security.

- INDEPENDENT