Google Inc., under investigation in Germany for the data-gathering practices of its Street View mapping service, now faces probes in Spain, France and Italy for possible violation of privacy laws.

Spain’s Data Protection Authority yesterday ordered an investigation of whether Google breached national privacy rules by collecting and storing data from Wi-Fi networks and information sent over these networks. Italy and France also ordered inquiries.

The Spanish agency “will call on Google to explain whether it has captured data without the consent of citizens in Spain,” it said in an e-mailed statement May 19. It sent a formal request urging Google “to block the data associated with wireless networks gathered in Spanish territory.”

The Hamburg Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday that it’s investigating people at Google on suspicion of criminal data capture. German data regulators are already looking into how cars that Google used to take pictures for Street View ended up with private data from Wi-Fi networks that weren’t password- protected.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, said May 17 that it deleted data mistakenly gathered from Wi-Fi networks in Ireland and was aiming to do the same in other countries.

Company representatives didn’t return calls and e-mails seeking comment yesterday on the latest investigations.

Street View allows Google users to click on maps to see photographs of roadsides. Officials from 30 European countries on May 11 adopted a common approach to keep Google from infringing privacy rights as the service is rolled out in Europe. They want Google, owner of the world’s biggest search engine, to improve blurring techniques used to disguise images and to make faces and license plates harder to recognize.

“The product as such is not in breach, but more measures have to be taken to improve how images are gathered and used,” Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the so-called Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, said May 11. The group is made up of the European Union’s 27 nations, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Switzerland’s data-protection agency sued Google in November for allegedly failing to comply with proposals to make it harder to identify people and cars on Street View. That case is pending.

via Google Street View Privacy Probe Joined by Spain, Italy, France – BusinessWeek.