With Google having illegally collected several hundred gigabytes of Internet users’ private information from unsecured Wi-Fi hot spots round the world during the last three years, regulators as well as private lawyers across Europe and the US are demanding - and in some cases obtaining - access to the data collected by Google.

The data was largely collected by Google – “inadvertently”, as the company puts it – under its Street View program. The information collected basically includes snippets of e-mails, web surfing, documents and other private information pertaining to the unsuspecting Internet surfers. 

The requests for obtaining the data – which has been put under lock and key in a Portland, Oregon, federal courthouse – have been put forth by some of the eight proposed class actions against Google in the US, and from governments of several other countries probing whether their privacy laws were violated by Google.

Noting that the revelation of the data will be “relevant evidence,” Patrick Keyes, a leading lawyer in one of the proposed class actions filed in the District of Columbia, said: “Lawyers representing plaintiffs in the case will review the data. This would be in the context of presenting the legal interests of those who have had their data intercepted, and would typically be produced under a protective order.”

Meanwhile, Google has already said that it intends forwarding portions of the data intercepted in Germany, France and Spain to the authorities concerned in these countries.