New Zealand police to investigate Google over privacy

New Zealand police are to investigate Google over its collection of data from wireless networks, officials said yesterday.

The move follows similar probes in Australia, Europe, the US and Canada after Google admitted that its cars taking photographs of cities in over 30 countries had inadvertently gathered personal data sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems.

"We met with the New Zealand police yesterday. We have agreed that we will now refer this matter formally to them," Assistant Privacy Commissioner Katrine Evans said.

Mr Evans said police would investigate whether the Web giant committed a criminal offence by collecting data from Wi-Fi networks while taking photos of streets and houses for its street maps service.

"We will continue to consider the privacy angles, but we have no further comment to make at this time," she said.

Privacy law specialist Kathryn Dalziel said Google would have committed a criminal offence if it was found to have intercepted any communication.

"This will create an interesting issue in terms of international law, since the company is based outside of New Zealand," she told the New Zealand Press Association.

A Google New Zealand spokesman said the company was "profoundly sorry" for the mistake and that the collection of data would have been limited by the fact that the Google cars were moving.

Internet users would have needed to be using their network as a car passed their house.

"Our in-car WiFi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second.

"That said, it's possible that the fragments of data we collected could contain entire e-mails or other content if a user broadcast personal information over an open network at that moment."