According to the recent news, district judge has ruled that lawsuit against Google over infringing federal wiretap legislation when harvesting information should proceed. The 9th circuit court of appeals of the United States decided that the tech giant’s data collection didn’t fall within an exception to the legislation.
Media reports confirmed that a federal appeals court had rejected the company’s attempt to dismiss a legal case accusing Google of infringing federal wiretap legislation when gathering information for its Street View program.
The search giant has been sued by different plaintiffs seeking to hold it responsible under the Wiretap Act for having intercepted information from private Wi-Fi networks to create Street View. When the company tried to claim they are operating within the law, the ninth US circuit court of appeals pointed out that such data collection didn’t fall within an exception to that law, because Wi-Fi communications weren’t electronic communications readily accessible to the general public.
The ruling was delivered a few days ago and upheld a June 2011 ruling by US district judge James Ware in San Francisco. In the meantime, Google hasn’t provided any comment over the issue thus far.