A federal appeals court in San Francisco has said a lawsuit accusing Google of illegal wiretapping can proceed, The New York Times reports. The case involves Google’s Street View initiative, in which Google vehicles collected e-mail, passwords and other personal information from unencrypted home networks. Google wanted the case dismissed, arguing the data it accessed was exempt from the Wiretap Act because it was readily accessible to the general public. The appeals court agreed with an earlier federal court’s ruling, reasoning that, "Even if it is commonplace for members of the general public to connect to a neighbor's unencrypted Wi-Fi network, members of the general public do not typically mistakenly intercept, store and decode data transmitted by other devices on the network.” (Registration may be required to access this story.)
Full Story