Google mapped much more than addresses in Canada

Canada's privacy commissioner says Google broke Canadian privacy laws when it accidentally collected personal information from unsecured wireless networks while putting together its Street View mapping service.

An investigation by Privacy Commisioner Jennifer Stoddart's office found complete emails, addresses, usernames and passwords. Even a list that provided the names of people suffering from certain medical conditions was collected.

Stoddart said Tuesday thousands of Canadians were likely affected by what amounted to a careless error on the part of an engineer.

According to the investigation, the code the engineer wrote to map wireless Internet signals also allowed for the capture of communications over unencrypted networks.