Republican pushes FCC for details on Google ‘Wi-Spy’

A Republican lawmaker is urging the FCC to release information about its investigation of Google’s so-called “Wi-Spy” breach. 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last year that it was investigating the breach, but has yet to unveil any findings.

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) in a letter Wednesday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he is concerned the FCC “has not yet shared any of the facts of this case with Congress.”

{mosads}He urged FCC Genachowski “to complete a full review expeditiously and provide a thorough report. This information will allow Congress to determine whether [legislative] action is necessary to prevent such a breach of private information in the future.”

Google has previously apologized for the Wi-Fi incident, in which the company collected the private information of thousands of Internet users, pulling it from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google says the breach was inadvertent, but the saga still alarmed privacy advocates and set off worldwide scrutiny and a flurry criticism in Washington.

The data was collected through Google’s Street View cars, which drive through neighborhoods taking photos for the Web giant’s mapping application.

In response to the Graves letter, a Google spokesman said: “As we have said before, we are sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks.”

The spokesman added that Google stopped collecting data when it realized what happened, and that it notified authorities. Google is working with authorities and wants to delete the data as soon as possible, said the spokesman, who noted that Google has not used the data.