On June 21, 2010, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal launched a multistate investigation into possible violations of US privacy laws by Google. The alleged violations of privacy law concerned the collection of personal and commercial information over Wi-Fi networks during the creation of the company's popular "Street View" maps. Google claimed in a June 2010 letter to the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee that its collection of private information, or "payload data," was an inadvertent mistake and did not violate any laws. Following Blumenthal's announcement, Google reached a settlement to avoid court proceedings that required them to stipulate that private data had been collected by the corporation's Street View vehicles. Similar investigations were undertaken by both the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2010.

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