Google Raided by Korea Police in Probe of Street View

Law-enforcement officials confiscated materials from Google in a raid today and will ask the company to surrender all data that may have been collected illegally from late last year until May, the Korean National Police Agency said in a statement. Google said it will cooperate with the investigation.

The Korean authorities follow investigations in Europe and the U.S. over Google’s data collection. The probes began after the company said in May that it had mistakenly gathered wireless Internet data while photographing residential streets worldwide.

“We will cooperate with the investigation and answer any questions they have,” Google said in an e-mail.

Google, whose Street View service allow users to click on maps to see 360-degree views of roads, is entangled in regulatory disputes in several countries related to online searches, advertising and maps. The South Korean police said it began investigating Google after it learned that Google saved private data collected over wireless networks.