Google's Schmidt says "No harm, no foul" about WiFi privacy invasion

When you face potential privacy investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, it's not the best idea to make light of one of the most serious privacy slip-ups your company has ever been involved in. But that's exactly what Google CEO Eric Schmidt did yesterday, when he said "No harm, no foul" over Google snooping on people's private WiFi networks. Does he really not understand the concept of personal privacy?

Google has been facing fire because its Street View vehicles gathered people's private communications on their home WiFi networks. Initially, Google denied it was doing that. Then, though it admitted that it had, in fact, collected that information. Here's Google's explanation, taken from its blog:

So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software --- although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.

I believe Google on this; I don't believe the company set out to snoop on people's WiFi communications. However, the fact remains that the company did it, and it's a very serious privacy violation.

Privacy investigators think it's serious as well. The Financial Times reports that the German commissioner for data protection is asking for "a detailed probe" into it, and called Google's explanation "highly unusual". The Financial Times also says that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is expected to launch an investigation.

With all that as a backdrop, you might expect that Schmidt would recognize the seriousness of the problem. He clearly doesn't, and his attempt to make light of the matter may make things only worse for Google.

The BBC reports that at Google's annual Zeitgeist conference in Watford, UK, Schmidt:

said that there was "no, harm, no foul", after the firm admitted that it had been collecting snippets of web activity from people's wi-fi.

The BBC said that he then added:

"Who was harmed? Name the person."

Only Google, of course, knows who was harmed, because Google is the only one who knows whose WiFi data it snooped upon.

I think Schmidt's response to the issue goes well beyond being tone-deaf. It truly does appear that he doesn't understand that people value their privacy, and that in the United States that right to privacy is built right into the Constitution. And the Europeans often treat privacy even more seriously.

Google is a remarkable company that accomplishes remarkable things. It's probably the premier engineering firm on the planet right not, and now just for search and mail, but for new operating systems such as Android and Chrome. There will be plenty of interesting news coming out of the Google I/O developer's conference this week. It also has a strong moral streak, as shown by the way it has stood up to the Chinese government.

But as long as Google is blind to the privacy implications of its actions, it won't be a great company. And that blindness can have serious consequences as well. As Microsoft found in years past, when governments begin investigations of your practices, you don't know where it will all end up.