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Germany's consumer protection minister strongly criticized Google for a widespread privacy breach and insisted Saturday the U.S. Internet giant must cooperate better with data protection authorities. Google Inc. issued an apology Friday, acknowledging it has been vacuuming up fragments of people's online activities broadcast over public Wi-Fi networks for the past four years while expanding a mapping feature called "Street View."

A four year mistake is either incompetance or a lie. Which way will Google choose to portray itself?

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations. The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates. "While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. "Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level." Joining Cornyn was Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who said such a measure would let "law enforcement stay ahead of the criminals."

"Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin Wednesday said the Internet giant "screwed up" by collecting personal data through wireless networks and promised new oversight as European officials pledged to open investigations of the data collection. Authorities in Germany, Spain and Italy said Wednesday they were investigating Google and its Street View service, which uses camera-equipped vehicles to take street images and mark the location of Wi-Fi networks. Mr. Brin, speaking the same day at Google's developer conference in San Francisco, said the company would put "more internal controls in place" to prevent such data captures in the future, including the hiring of outside help. "Trust is very important to us," Mr. Brin said. "We're going to do everything we can to preserve that trust.""

G apologizes. Again, better to ask forgiveness... If users remain silent & gvt doesn't prosecute, why comply?

"Google has decided to stop its Street View cars from sniffing wireless networking data after an embarrassing privacy gaffe."

Google decided to stop violating our privacy after they were caught? Now that's forward-thinking business strategy. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Some people think social media requires trust to be a sustainable model.