The Supreme Court has declined to hear Google's appeal of a ruling that it collected people's personal data through its Street View mapping project. The justices left in place a ruling that Google employees violated the federal wiretap law when they rolled through residential streets with car cameras to shoot photos for Street View.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco said the information picked up from unencrypted Wi-Fi signals included emails, usernames, passwords, images and documents.

Google publicly apologized in May 2010 for having collected fragments of "payload data" from unsecured wireless networks in more than 30 countries. The company has agreed to pay $7 million to settle a probe into the matter involving 38 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.