U.S. Court Rejects Google's Bid to Dismiss Street View Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Google's bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of violating federal wiretap law, according to a report by Reuters.

Google accidentally collected emails and other personal data while building its popular Street View program.

In September 2013, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Google was not exempt from liability under the federal Wiretap Act for intercepting user names, emails, passwords, and other information from private Wi-Fi networks in order to create Street View.

Street View was designed to provide panoramic views of city streets.

The lawsuit came after Google publicly apologized in May 2010 for collected fragments of "payload data" from unsecured wireless networks in over 30 countries, according to Reuters.

Google was accused of having collected the data of driving its vehicles through neighborhoods from 2008 through 2010 to gather photos for Street View.

Back in 2011, U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Francisco allowed plaintiffs in a number of consolidated private lawsuits to pursue federal Wiretap Act claims against Google.

 He dismissed California state law claims however, according to Reuters.

Google has already agreed to pay $7 million to settle a probe into the matter involving 38 states and the District of Columbia, according to the report. As part of the agreement, Google agreed to destroy data collected in the U.S.