German official demands source code of Google software

Jun 3, 2010, 16:07 GMT

Berlin - The German privacy official leading an inquiry into Google's surveys of wireless networks demanded Thursday that the US company disclose the source code of the software it uses in its camera cars.

Google has been roasted by privacy advocates worldwide after admitting that it not only logged the positions of wireless routers in every house and office, but also the snippets of data that each was transmitting when the Google car drove past.

Johannes Caspar, privacy commissioner for the state of Hamburg, who is leading Germany's inquiry into possible breaches of the law, spoke after he and his software experts had studied one of the cars used by Google to take panorama photos for its Street View service.

Google has previously said it did not realize that Kismet, a free software program it uses to detect wireless networks, was also recording snippets of emails and web pages. Kismet only captures that data when network owners forget to switch on encryption.

Caspar said he had now established that both Kismet and a piece of software created by Google engineers were used to list wireless routers, and that the data snippets were permanently retained afterwards.

'In our experiment, the data which had been transmitted could be easily recognized afterwards in their logs,' Caspar said in Hamburg.

'This is such an important issue that we believe a comprehensive inquiry is vital.'

Google had cooperated with the inquiry, but he wanted more information, Caspar said. This included the source code of software used in the cars and a sample hard drive with raw data.

As privacy advocate, Caspar has powers to impose instant fines and order procedural changes. Hamburg state prosecutors have been separately investigating since mid-May whether Google committed a crime when it eavesdropped on wireless traffic.

A variety of companies log the locations of wireless routers in the world's cities. The information is useful in building navigation systems that are more exact than satellite navigation.