Private data collected by Google from Romanians cause for scandal only in Brussels

The authorities in Bucharest did not have any information yesterday about the data illegally copied by US giant Google from Romanians’ unsecured WiFi networks and did not have any plans for an investigation, either.
The “accidental” collection of private data from unsecured WiFi networks by Google from a number of EU countries has caused a huge scandal among officials in Brussels and harsh investigations in Germany, while the authorities in Romania are still trying to figure out whether the US giant committed an offence or crime in Romania or not.
Google admitted last week that its Street View vehicles accidentally captured more than 600 gigabytes of private data from unsecured WiFi networks in almost thirty countries and blamed it on a programming error.
Whereas other countries in the EU are talking about the most serious scandal regarding privacy protection ever, the authorities in Romania are clueless about where to start analysing it. The Communications Ministry for instance says that it has no responsibility for the data collected by Google, because the equipment in the unsecured WiFi networks operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range, which is unregulated.
At the same time, the representatives of the National Personal Data Processing Supervisory Authority did not answer ZF’s questions about whether the collection of data by Google complied with the laws in Romania or not.