
Police probe nothing to do with “net filtering”
Australia has denied that it is picking on Google over
its stance against net filtering. The former UK penal colony has become one of the only countries
in the world to consider criminal charges against the search engine for it
gathering wi-fi data.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the privacy
investigation announced on Sunday had been ordered by the attorney-general, and
mirrored similar action taken against Google in other countries. Conroy said that Google did not believe that Australian
laws applied to them.
"They say, 'hey, we are based in the US, we don't
care what the European Union says, we don't care what individual jurisdictions
in Europe say and we don't care what the Australian Government says'," claims Conroy.
Conroy accused Google of deliberately collecting private
data while taking pictures for its street maps. Google insists it gathered the information by accident
and promised to cooperate with the police investigation. Conroy last month launched personal attacks on Schmidt
and said Google set out to collect private information during the Street View
project.
However Conroy has good reason to hate Google. The outfit
has led the widespread criticism of his treasured plan filter the internet
aimed at blocking material such as child pornography and extremist literature
and anyone else that Conroy disagrees with.