Let’s assume for a moment that Google’s collection of Wi-Fi “payload” data really was unintentional. And that Google never used the data, didn’t even know it was there and stored it securely. Is it actually a privacy leak if no one has looked at the private data?

That, of course, is a question for lawyers and courts and government regulators.

Now consider: What happens when the various lawyers and courts and government agencies around the world investigating Google’s Wi-Fiasco demand to look at the data Google collected?

It becomes a privacy leak.

After all, in order to see whether there’s any personally identifiable or sensitive data in Google’s big pile o’ Wi-Fi data, somebody has to invade the privacy of the people whose data has been collected. And the prime candidates are litigators, politicians and bureaucrats.

Isn’t that comforting?

This isn’t a defense of Google. Google failed. That has become clear in the month since the search giant admitted that the cars collecting photos for its Street View feature were also collecting samples of the Wi-Fi signals near the cars — and those samples contained actual snippets of any unencrypted Wi-Fi network traffic.

Google failed in many ways, but perhaps its biggest failure was this: It collected data it didn’t know it was collecting. That may sound innocuous. It’s not. It’s an epic failure of good data-management policy.

Look, if you don’t know what you’ve got, you can’t manage it. You can’t keep it secure or retain it as long as you legally should, because you don’t know which rules apply.

Google spent years collecting it-didn’t-know-what. Now it will be paying the price for years — in bad publicity, investigations and lawsuits.

via The Data You Don’t Even Know You Have – Computerworld.