Google’s apparently inadvertent practice of collecting Wi-Fi data from unencrypted networks will haunt the company for a long time, it seems.

After being called out and investigated about the incident in Europe and Australia (), attorney generals from about 30 U.S. states are looking to start a joint inquiry into Google’s () data collection from Wi-Fi networks.

Google argues the data collection was a mistake. From Google’s blog post about the incident:

“In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.”

This explanation wasn’t very satisfying for Germany or Australia, and it likely won’t go smoothly in the U.S., either.

“Violating legitimate expectations of privacy on the part of both homeowners and business people is an extraordinarily serious issue, and we want all the facts as quickly as possible,” said Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general in an interview with the New York Times. “At this point, we are asking questions and frankly some of the answers we received so far have raised additional questions that we have put to the company,” Blumenthal said.

After the Google Buzz () privacy fiasco, Google needed to be extra careful not to repeat a similar mistake. Unfortunately it did, and now it’s facing a large-scale inquiry and a lot of public questioning of its privacy-related practices.

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