FOI request reveals Google delay in deleting UK Street View data

Freedom of Information request shows that information commissioner Christopher Graham seeks removal of remaining Google data

On Friday, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that Google still had not deleted all the data captured from Wi-Fi networks via its Street View cameras.

This is despite Google having been ordered by the information commissioner to delete the sensitive data in mid November.

The FOI request was made by a Mr P John, a campaigner for communications rights and communications law enforcement.

The request revealed emails between information commissioner Christopher Graham and Peter Fleishcher, Google's global privacy counsel, to be seen. It is evident from these that some UK data remained undeleted.

"While this deletion is now done, there is a wrinkle to the process, which I want to explain to you for the sake of completeness. There is some data from the UK which we haven't been able to delete yet," Fleishcher wrote.

"This relates to data that was still on Street View car disks at the time we discovered our mistake in May. Because these disks could contain data from countries where we have received preservation requests from the authorities, we must make sure that in deleting the UK data we don't disturb the surrounding data.

"In the meantime, the data on these disks was never uploaded to our servers, and these disks have been and will remain securely stored as we work to complete the task."

Fleischer goes on to ask for an announcement by the ICO to confirm that Google had deleted all the data it stored on its servers. However, Graham refused to do this and replied: "I see no need to give the story new legs when the process remains incomplete. I should also like to know how you propose to satisfy me as to the deletion of the remaining data at the point at which you are free to get rid of it."

Google has now confirmed that the last remaining data was deleted over the weekend.

"We are profoundly sorry for mistakenly collecting payload data in the UK from unencrypted wireless networks. Since we announced our mistake in May we have co-operated closely with the ICO and worked to improve our internal controls.

"As we have said before, we did not want this data, have never used any of it in our products or services, and have sought to delete it as quickly as possible.

"We can confirm that the UK data has now been deleted, and that this has been independently certified."