Ninth Circuit Panel is Reluctant to Overturn Google’s $13M Privacy Settlement
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel signaled a strong reluctance to overturn a settlement that pays no direct money to Google users whose private data was swiped by Google’s Street View cars.
Nearly 10 years in the making, the $13 million settlement U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer approved last March gives $9 million to privacy rights groups and forced Google to stop harvesting data through street-view vehicles.
Google also agreed to destroy all the data it collected and maintain websites to educate consumers about wireless security and data encryption. The rest of the settlement money went to attorneys’ fees and costs.
With a class numbering 60 million, Breyer reasoned that each would receive roughly 22 cents, and that is contingent on whether they could even be identified. Determining class membership would require sifting through 300 million frames of payload data acquired by Google and matching it to numbers on hardware that may no longer exist. The assumption is also that only 1% of the class will avail themselves of the 22 cent payment.
