Google Returns to Court, This Time in Spain

The battle over Google's data collection tactics continues to expand abroad, with Spain joining Germany and South Korea as the latest countries to tangle with the Internet giant over its "Street View" mapping feature. A summons made public this weekin Spain revealed that Madrid Judge Raquel Fernandino has called for a Google representative to appear before his court in October to contest whether the company committed a "computer crime" by taking shots of city streets. The subpoena stems from a complaint filed in June by Internet watchdog group APEDANICA charging that Google violated an article of Spain's criminal code in the way it intercepted and collected communications data during "Street View" mapping. "Street View" is a Google feature in which users can access street-level views of public buildings and private residences. The company admitted in May that cars used to collect the images had also recorded fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public wireless networks for the past four years in more than 30 countries. Google maintains, however, that it never used the data and hasn't broken any laws. A spokeswoman for Google Spain, Marisa Toro, told the New York Times that the company would cooperate fully with the Spanish investigation and work to find a solution, "so that users can be at ease." The feature has caused headaches for Google as it expands in countries with strict privacy laws such as Germany, Australia, Switzerland and South Korea. Concerns in Germany over the company's announcement earlier this month that it would introduce the feature in 20 German cities by the end of the year caused such a furor that Google has agreed to meet next month with German government officials to discuss privacy concerns. South Korea's National Police Agency has also launched an investigation into whether Google illegally collected and stored private information while preparing to launch "Street View" in that country, ending in a raid last week of the company's Seoul office headquarters. Google says it will push ahead with the feature because of user demand. "Users want to have it," spokeswoman Lena Wagner told the Wall Street Journal this week.

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Google Returns to Court, This Time in Spain

Katie Kindelan

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Katie Kindelan