US Supreme Court rejects Google’s Street View case appeal

The US Supreme Court rejected Google’s attempt to appeal a class-action lawsuit claiming the search giant violated federal wiretap laws when its Street View vehicles collected data from private WiFi networks. In 2010, Google said that it accidentally recorded data from unencrypted WiFi networks, stating it immediately grounded its cars and reached out to regulators to find out how to properly dispose of the information that it collected.

Following a series of lawsuits ,Google agreed to a $7 million settlement with 38 states affected by the unauthorized data collecting. Mountain View tried to contest that WiFi transmissions were exempt from the federal Wiretap Act, which permits the interception of radio communications that aren’t encrypted. But the San Francisco-based Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals denied the company’s appeal and elected to uphold the case. To resolve this matter, Google will have to return to lower court or settle this matter through other means.

(via WSJ)