Google Balks at Turning Over Data to Regulators

Google on Thursday balked at requests from regulators in Germany and Hong Kong to surrender fragments of Internet data and e-mails it had improperly collected from unsecured home wireless networks, saying it needed time to resolve legal issues.

In Germany, Google said it was not able to comply with the Hamburg data protection supervisor's request to inspect information the company collected from Internet users by roving cars used to compile its Street View photo map archive. The company, in a statement, implied that German privacy laws, ironically, were preventing it from turning over the information, even to a government agency. In Hong Kong, the privacy commissioner, Roderick B. Woo, threatened unspecified sanctions after Google did not respond to his request to inspect data collected in the territory by the roving cars. Mr. Woo said Google had ignored a Monday deadline to turn over the information. The standoffs increase the chance that Google may face fines and proceedings in Europe and Asia after its cars collected 600 gigabytes of what the company said was fragmentary data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in 33 countries and Hong Kong. The company has declined to describe the information it collected in more detail, and says it gathered the data inadvertently because of a programming error.