The engineer told fellow engineers and a senior manager at Google that he had written the Street View code to capture emails, password, and other data from unencrypted wireless networks, according to the FCC report sent to the Los Angeles Times by Google.
"We decided to voluntarily make the entire document available except for the names of individuals", Google spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said in an emailed statement. "While we disagree with some of the statements made in the document, we agree with the FCC's conclusion that we did not break the law. We hope that we can now put this matter behind us."
While the FCC concluded that Google did not break any laws, it did fine the company $25,000 for obstructing its investigation into the Street View service.
Privacy groups have criticized the FCC for letting Google off the hook for collecting data from unencrypted wireless networks. "This is clearly a consequence of self-regulation, but the fingers really do have to point back to the FCC”, R. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.