It is almost month since Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that he is heading a multi-state investigation into Google’s Street View.
Yes, despite weekly claims that he would reveal the identities of those state the following week, as of today not one state has been identified by Blumenthal as having asking him to head up an investigation – a probe his office initially indicated included about 30 states.
- Ct Atty Gen Richard Blumenthal who is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate
While all the other media accepted Blumenthal’s press statement on June 21 that he had been asked to investigate the methods used by Google to form its maps and what it did with the data it gathered, I requested the identities of the other states.
Considering that Blumenthal has been caught lying about his Vietnam war record it now makes all his press releases suspect in at least my eyes, especially when he claims that his Vietnam lies were simply slips of the tongue.
I filed an FOI request on June 21 demanding documentation about his investigation.
In response, Blumenthal’s office sent me the following statement that day:
“A number of states have joined our multistate investigation of Google. We expect additional states to commit in the coming days and weeks. We will provide more information next week regarding states joining our investigation,” was the written answer I received a couple of hours after I asked.
Well its been three weeks and the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate still hasn’t fullfilled his promise. So I called his staff today to alert them that I would be doing a follow-up column.
In the days prior the the New York Times outing Blumenthal’s fictitious claims at some of his speeches to veterans, Blumenthal would have talked on the phone. But now he is hiding from reporters who still have questions for him that he doesn’t want to answer.
So I received the following statement last two weeks ago from his office:
“A substantial number of states have signed on to our multistate investigation of Google Street View. Announcing the number and names of states
is premature because additional states are still determining whether to join and we must seek permission from others to publicly name them. We will announce the number of states and their names next week.”
Well that week has come and gone and still not one state identified.
I renewed my request for the identities of any of the states on Monday and as of this morning still not one state revealed.
Tuesday is almost over, and nothing.
Stay tuned.
Can’t name the up to 30 states which should be asking him to file? Well maybe the mainstream press can give him a softball question – like “Can you name 20 states which AREN’T involved ? ? ? “
Although in theory it would be possible for Google to intercept someone’s passwords, it is highly unlikely. For one, important passwords are encrypted. Factoring in all of the data including images transmitted over a wireless network, sensitive information would be only a millionth of what was sent. An image such as the small picture of Blumingidiot is 12360 bytes or about as much info as this whole article. That is only 1 image out of many on this page. How many pages do you view without typing a password? The odds are very slim that their moving vehicles was passing by at the moment you typed it to capture it.