(Image source from: Google in legal mess again})

In what can be deemed as a big legal blow for the Internet giant, a federal appeals court gave thumbs up to the lawsuit that incriminates Google of illegal wiretapping. Quite interestingly, the decision comes at a time when “online privacy” is being fiercely debated.

The lawsuit is related to Google's much publicized initiative “Street View” where it tried to map the populous world. Apart from photographs, Street View vehicles covertly  aggregated e-mail, passwords, images and other personal information from unencrypted home computer networks.

The snooping of data sparked an outrage when the thing first came in light in Germany in 2010. It also elicited a score of lawsuits by “United States citizens who strongly felt that Google had violated their privacy and was illegally wiretapping them. Those suits were condensed into one case, which was heard by a California court.”

Although Google tried dismiss the cases, saying the Wi-Fi communications it captured were “readily accessible to the general public” and therefore not a violation of federal wiretapping laws. The lower court rejected that argument, and on Tuesday the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit did too.

“This is an important opinion for privacy rights,” said Kathryn E. Barnett of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, one of the law firms working for the plaintiffs. “It says that when you are in your home, you have a right to privacy in your communications. Someone just can’t drive by and seize them.”

“The unanimous, 35-page decision by a three-judge panel found little merit in Google’s legal maneuverings, stating at one critical point that the company was basically inventing meanings in an effort to declare its actions legal,” wrote a US daily.

AW: Suchorita Dutta