Google denied the charge, insisting that it was gathering only publicly broadcast Wi-Fi network names and the identifying addresses of Wi-Fi routers, but not personal information sent over the network. Within days, an independent analysis by German security experts proved decisively that Street View's cars were extracting unencrypted personal information from homes. Google was forced to concede that it had intercepted and stored "payload data," personal information grabbed from unencrypted Wi-Fi transmissions. As its apologetic blog post noted, "In some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords."

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 452