In spite of the apologies Google’s issued and the corrective actions the company’s taken, Google’s Street View-related problems appear to be growing worse, not going away. Earlier today, Korean authorities raided its local offices in connection with the case.
According to Choe Sang-Hun, the Korean National Police Agency explained in a statement, "We intend to find out what kinds of data they have collected and how much. We will try to retrieve all the original data illegally collected and stored through domestic Wi-Fi networks from the Google headquarters."
Then the police indicated that individuals might be held responsible for the whole mess, adding, "We will investigate Google Korea officials and scrutinize the data we confiscated today . . ."
Obviously, this looks bad for Google. Since the company’s said it will cooperate with everyone’s investigations, the fact that the police chose to raid its offices seems to indicate there’s a significant lack of trust.
The one factor that might play in Google’s favor is the timing of this development. Stories about its collection of sensitive WiFi data have been circulating for quite a while, after all, so the Korean National Police Agency could have acted sooner if the matter was considered a high priority.
And on that note, the KNPA didn’t provide any sort of timetable with regards to what will happen next, so it’s hard to guess how quickly the investigation will resolve itself from here.