MPs have accused internet giant Google of deliberately spying on households for commercial gain.
Tory Robert Halfon said it was "hard to believe" that Google could copy millions of computer passwords and email details and "not know what it was doing".
And Liberal Democrat Don Foster said it was "not surprising" that the company "want to capture as much of the data as they can to use it for commercial purposes".
Google has admitted "mistakenly" collecting information from wireless networks as its vehicles drove around residential streets taking photographs for its Street View mapping product. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's privacy watchdog, is now investigating the matter.
During a Westminster Hall debate on privacy and the internet, Mr Halfon said: "It's not good enough, as Google have suggested, that the whole thing was an innocent mistake.
"That was their line when Street View uploaded images of naked children without the consent and knowledge of those involved. That was their line when a Google engineer was able illegally to access children's private email accounts and telephone records - and then Google took disciplinary action only after parents complained that the engineer had illegally used Google data to harass their children.
"I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wifi details, computer passwords and email addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing.
Mr Foster said: "It is for commercial purposes that they (Google) are doing this. Only today we have had revealed the latest figures on the value of e-commerce in this country, which has gone in a very, very short number of years from nothing to £100 billion, which is 7% of the economy of this country - and we all know it's going to rise. So it's not surprising that Google want to capture as much of the data as they can to use it for commercial purposes."
Mark Lancaster, Tory MP for Milton Keynes North, spoke of a women's refuge in his constituency whose need for anonymity had been "ignored" by Google. "Imagine their (potential refugees') great concern when on entering the name of the organisation on Google, a picture of the building the refugees use and also their address appear on the search engine," he said.
Requests to Google to remove the women's refuge from the map had received no response, he added.
Mr Halfon called for a "serious commission of inquiry" that would seek to "redress the balance" between the freedom of the internet and users' civil liberties. This commission of inquiry would be composed of members with expertise on civil liberties, the internet and commerce, he said.
Originally posted at Yahoo news UK
