SANTA MONICA, CA — Consumer Watchdog today welcomed an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa) into Google’s use of NASA’s Moffett Federal Airfield in Santa Clara County, California, near Google headquarters.

Grassley, ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote Charles F. Bolden Jr., NASA Administrator, expressing concern about “troubling allegations regarding the Google fleet of aircraft housed at Moffett Airfield.”

In January 2011 Consumer Watchdog released a report, Lost in the Cloud: Google and the US Government, detailing how Google has inappropriately benefited from its ties to the Obama Administration, including how NASA’s Moffett Airfield, near Google’s world headquarters, was turned into a taxpayer-subsidized private airport for Google and their corporate junkets.

“Whistleblowers have questioned the benefit to the U.S. government from the Google fleet being housed at Moffett Airfield,” wrote Grassley. “Additionally, my office received allegations that Google has purchased jet fuel from the government at a discounted price, a price allegedly well below the market price due to its tax treatment.”

“Sen. Grassley is finally asking the right tough questions about Google’s sweetheart deal with NASA,” said John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project.

Click here to read Sen. Grassley’s letter here.

Consumer Watchdog’s study found that a growing fleet of jets and helicopters based at Moffett stand ready to ferry the company’s top executives near or far, for business or pleasure, for vacations or schmoozing. The trips included at least three wintertime jaunts to the Caribbean and a trip by Google’s then chief executive Eric Schmidt to the Cannes Film Festival.  Humanitarian groups, by contrast, have been denied access to the airport.

Click here to read Consumer Watchdog’s report, Lost in the Cloud.

Grassley asked Bolden to respond to these questions by May 25:

1) How did NASA arrive at the lease amount of $3.7 million per year? Does that represent a fair market rate for the lease? Which individuals at NASA and Google negotiated the lease amount?

2) As of the date of this letter, how many aircraft owned or operated by Google are present at Moffett Airfield? Provide detailed descriptions of all aircraft.

3) Why does Moffett Airfield house Google aircraft and when did this arrangement begin? Provide all contracts between Google, NASA, and/or the military related to aircraft and aircraft fuel at Moffett Airfield.

4) Please describe the agreements by which Google obtains fuel for its aircraft at Moffett Airfield and provide fueling records for each aircraft over the past five years.

5) Are any of the aircraft used to support NASA research? Provide a specific explanation regarding the Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet.4

6) Have any NASA officials flown on the Google aircraft? Please provide a list of each official and describe the nature and purpose of each trip in detail.

7) For each aircraft owned or operated by Google, provide all flight plans and passenger manifests for each flight originating and landing at Moffett Airfield in the last five years.

8- In the last five years, have any other aircraft owned by private companies or individuals housed aircraft at Moffett Airfield? If yes, provide a detailed description of the aircraft, the ownership of the aircraft.

Consumer Watchdog had brought its report to the attention of Congress by sending it to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and had asked him to investigate.

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Today, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly ready to allege that Google engaged in deceptive practices and installed tracking cookies in an unacceptable manner. Google is reportedly negotiating with the FTC regarding the size of the fine it will be forced to pay for its misconduct. Although the exact amount of the fine has not yet been released, the FTC is able to fine Google $16,000 a day per violation and Bloomberg has reported that the fine is likely to be in excess of $10 million.

John M. Simpson, the director at the Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project, expressed support for the FTC taking strong action against Google:

“Google hacked past a key privacy setting on iPhones and iPads and other devices using Apple’s Safari browser, placed tracking cookies on them and then lied, saying the settings were still effective. I am delighted the FTC appears ready to take strong action against an obvious violation of Google’s promises to honor users’ privacy in its ‘Buzz’ Consent Decree with the Commission.”

If the FTC forces Google to pay a multimillion dollar fine for “unfair and deceptive” business practices, it could signal that the FTC is finally serious about protecting users’ privacy.

SANTA MONICA, CA – The Federal Trade Commission appears ready to fine Google millions of dollars for hacking around privacy settings on iPhones and iPads.  Consumer Watchdog filed a complaint in February with the FTC after Stanford Researcher Jonathan Mayer revealed what the Internet giant was doing.

Sara Forden of Bloomberg News today reported the Commission is negotiating with Google about how big the fine will be.  She cited an unidentified source as saying the fine could amount to more than $10 million.

“Google hacked past a key privacy setting on iPhones and iPads and other devices using Apple’s Safari browser, placed tracking cookies on them and then lied, saying the settings were still effective,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director. “I am delighted the FTC appears ready to take strong action against an obvious violation of Google’s promises to honor users’ privacy in its ‘Buzz’ Consent Decree with the Commission.”

Under the terms of the consent decree, the FTC can fine Google up to $16,000 per violation per day.

Click here to read Consumer Watchdog’s complaint to the FTC.

A study released Feb. 17 by Jonathan Mayer of Stanford University’s Security Lab, and the Center for Internet and Society, found that Google has been circumventing a privacy setting in Apple’s Safari web browser.  Like most web browsers, Safari provides the option not to receive third-party “cookies.”  Cookies are small bits of code placed on the browser and can be used by ad networks to track you as you surf the web. Blocking third-party cookies is supposed to prevent such tracking.

Safari is the primary browser on the iPhone and iPad. It is also the default browser on Apple’s computers.

Click here to read Jonathan Mayer’s study.

The Stanford study found that three other companies – Vibrant Media Inc., WPP PLC’s Media Innovation Group LLC and Gannett Co.’s PointRoll Inc. — were also circumventing the Safari privacy setting.

Mayer’s study was first reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Click here to read the Journal report.

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The controversy surrounding Google’s Street View initiative collecting personal data from unprotected private WiFi networks is not dying out, fueled by revelations that a company engineer told colleagues about the private information that was being gathered.

A consumer advocacy group in the United States on May 2 filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Communications Commission asking for all the documents connected with the agency’s investigation into the incident.

At the same time, The New York Times reported that regulators in Europe are considering reopening their investigations after learning that the Google engineer who developed the code that enabled the Street View vehicles to collect the personal information—referred to as “payload data”—had told two colleagues, including a supervising manager, that the data was being captured.

Google executives initially denied that any personal information had been collected, but later admitted that it happened and laid the blame on a single engineer who they said was acting on his own. The discovery that others within Google knew about the collection of payload data as it was being done—as outlined in the FCC’s April 13 report on its investigation—contradicts Google’s earlier statements and reinforces the belief that company executives were not straightforward with regulators in the United States and Europe.

The FCC said that they could find no evidence of legal wrongdoing by Google, but fined the search engine giant $25,000 for hindering the investigation through delays and failure to supply all the information that was requested. The regulators also said that the decision by the engineer in question—referred to in the FCC document as “Engineer Doe” and later identified in news reports as Google software developer Marius Milner—to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and not answer the FCC’s questions made it impossible to determine all the facts.

“The FCC order gives an overview of what happened and shows that others including a senior manager knew—or should have known—about plans to gather messages from private WiFi networks,” John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project, said in statement outlining the group’s FOIA request. “The order makes it clear that Google stonewalled and was uncooperative. That’s why the public needs to see all the documents that are related to the case.”

Simpson argued that Google officials were trying to portray the FCC report as proof that the company did nothing wrong.

“That is not the case at all,” he said. “The FCC order shows that substantial questions about the Wi-Spy scandal remain unanswered and that is largely because the engineer responsible for writing the code that gathered payload data invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.”

Google has come under criticism on both sides of the Atlantic for its Street View program after it was learned that between 2007 and 2010, the program’s vehicles had collected personal data—such as passwords, emails, text messages and users’ Internet usage histories—along with other WiFi information. In its April 13 report, the FCC said the Street View vehicles had collected more than 200GB of payload data.

Street View is a program designed to take photos of streets throughout the world and make them available online. As part of the program, information on WiFi networks was collected to help Google develop better location-based services, according to company executives. However, the payload data was not among the information that was needed for those services.

Many European agencies had closed their investigations into the issue. However, The Times reported May 2 that upon learning that others within Google beyond Milner knew about the payload data being collected, some—including those in England and France, as well as with the European Commission, the antitrust arm of the European Union—are considering reopening their probes. The revelation also will play a role in ongoing investigations in Germany, according to Johannes Caspar, data protection commissioner for Hamburg and the investigator who first uncovered Google’s collection of the personal information.

“Of course, this will have a big impact,” Caspar told The Times. “This is apparently a totally different situation than what we thought initially. We had been told that it was a simple mistake, as the company had told us. But now, we are learning that this wasn’t a mistake and that people within the company knew this information was being collected. That puts it in a totally different light.”

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security software vendor Sophos, said in a May 2 post on the company’s blog that “it would be wrong to scapegoat Milner for the privacy debacle caused by the Street View cars slurping [up] too much information from WiFi hotspots.”

“For some time, Google maintained that the problem was entirely down to a ‘rogue engineer,’ but the recently released [FCC] report reveals that Milner/’Engineer Doe’ … told colleagues in 2007 and 2008 about the sensitive nature of the data being collected by the Street View mapping cars, and suggested that the project should be reviewed for privacy issues,” Cluley wrote. “That privacy review never took place. Clearly, there are lessons to be learnt here by project managers as well as software engineers. Management should carefully peruse project plans, proposals and specifications to fully understand the scope of the code that is being written, and what is intended to be done with any data that comes out of the process.

“And engineers need to learn that just because data can be collected, doesn’t mean that it should.”

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and a top FTC staffer traded emails in 2010 about whether Facebook and other tech companies were secretly funding a nonprofit group pushing hard for regulators to investigate Google Inc.

The messages, revealed in internal emails recently obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act, were exchanged as the FTC was being asked by the California-based group Consumer Watchdog to investigate Google’s “Street View” mapping project. The project came under scrutiny after Google said it had mistakenly harvested personal data from homeowners’ unsecured wireless networks.

The FTC correspondence centered on a May 18, 2010, report by the Wall Street Journal, “FTC Likely to Examine Google’s Wireless Gaffe,” which noted how Consumer Watchdog called on the FTC to launch a probe. The article prompted Cecelia Prewett, director of the FTC’s public affairs office, to send an email to colleagues asking, “Who’s feeding him?”

Robert Davis, then an attorney adviser with the FTC who is now in private practice, responded, “Could it be Google feeding him here? Might they want to say that the FTC is looking at this so the Europeans should wait and see (and maybe calm down)? Just another diabolical press theory.”

Ms. Prewett, in a subsequent email, added, “[It's] also Microsoft and Yahoo which probably funds the consumer group making the complaint.”

Hours later, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz responded, “and maybe Facebook — one of the folks who works for them sent it to me.”

An official with Consumer Watchdog, which has been a frequent and sharp critic of Google, said despite the speculation, the organization does not receive funding from the search engine’s competitors — Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook.

“I don’t know why they would have speculated about that,” said John M. Simpson, privacy director for Consumer Watchdog. “They could have just called and asked.”

He said the group had an opportunity to take funding from a Google competitor but decided against it.

The organization’s funding, he said, comes from a mix of fundraising and grant sources, including from the Rose Foundation. That’s the same organization to which a Google official wrote in 2009 complaining about Consumer Watchdog, though later apologized for the letter.

A spokeswoman for Google declined to comment Tuesday.

FTC spokeswoman Claudia B. Farrell said the email exchange represented nothing more than “staff speculation,” not any insider knowledge about the watchdog group’s funding sources. She declined to comment further.

Former FTC Chairman William Kovacic said it’s not unheard of for industry special interests to fund nonprofit groups in an attempt to influence federal regulators. He said companies spend lots of time in Washington “trying to interest public agencies in giving your rivals a hard time.”

At the same time, he said, that sort of information can be valuable to federal regulators seeking to develop investigative leads.

“A question you always have to ask yourself is, ‘Where did that come from?’ ” he said.

There’s no doubt that tech companies have beefed up their presence in Washington in recent years. Last year, Facebook spent more than $1.2 million lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies, including the FTC, on privacy, data storage and other issues.

Google spent nearly $10 million lobbying last year, nearly twice as much as the previous year, relying on in-house lobbyists as well as the Podesta Group and Normandy Group, records show. Microsoft spent more than $7 million in lobbying fees.

The FTC ended its probe of Google’s “Street View” mapping service after the company said it would improve privacy practices. But the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched its own investigation into whether the project ran afoul of federal privacy laws.

The FCC investigation didn’t say Google broke the law, but the inquiry raised fresh questions about how much the company knew about the harvesting of unsecured wireless data, including emails and search engine history.

Among the emails the FTC released to The Times was a message from an FCC enforcement official in October 2010 asking an FTC official “what you all are doing (or not doing)” on the “Google ‘Spy-Fi’ matter”?

On Tuesday, Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, called for Congress to hold hearings after the FCC fined Google $25,000 for obstructing its investigation. Google has denied trying to block the probe.

While the FTC eventually dropped its “Street View” investigation, the commission recently hired an outside attorney to lead a separate antitrust investigation of Google.

So far only the FCC’s Notice of Apparent Liability For Forfeiture has been made public.  It ordered that Google pay $25,000 for willfully obstructing the FCC’s investigation into how Google’s Street View cars gathered “payload data” from private Wi-Fi networks.

“The FCC order gives an overview of what happened and shows that others including a senior manager knew – or should have known – about plans to gather messages from private Wi-Fi networks,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director. “The order makes it clear that Google stonewalled and was uncooperative.  That’s why the public needs to see all the documents that are related to the case.”

Click here to read Consumer Watchdog’s FOIA request.

“Google is paying a $25,000 fine for its noncompliance and is trying to portray the FCC order as exonerating the company.  That is not the case at all,” said Simpson. “The FCC order shows that substantial questions about the Wi-Spy scandal remain unanswered and that is largely because the engineer responsible for writing the code that gathered payload data invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.”

The New York Times identified the engineer, known as “Engineer Doe” in the FCC order, as Marius Milner on Tuesday.  On Monday Consumer Watchdog said  “Engineer Doe” should be granted immunity from prosecution for his testimony before a Senate hearing.

The FCC order makes clear that as early as 2007 or 2008 Street View team members had wide access to Milner’s design document and code in which the plan to intercept “payload data” was spelled out.  One engineer reviewed the code line by line, five engineers pushed the code into Street View cars and, according to the FCC, Milner specifically told two engineers working on the project, including a senior manager, about collecting ‘payload data.’  Nonetheless, they all claim they did not learn payload data was being collected until April or May 2010.

The FCC first released a highly censored version of its order on April 13, 2012.  Consumer Watchdog filed a FOIA request seeking an un-redacted version of the order.  The FCC then sent a letter to Google saying it would have 10 days to justify censoring the order.  Over the weekend Google released a version of the order that omitted only the names of people the FCC interviewed.  Consumer Watchdog has withdrawn the original FOIA request for an uncensored version of the order.

The largely un-redacted version that the Internet giant made available over the weekend shows a troubling a portrait of a company where an engineer could run wild with software code that violates the privacy of tens of millions people worldwide, but the corporate culture of “Engineers First” prevented corporate counsel or other engineers from stopping the privacy violations, Consumer Watchdog said.

The Wi-Spy scandal is still being investigated by a group of more than 30 state attorneys general.  Consumer Watchdog attorneys are counsel for the plaintiffs in a federal class action suit against Google in the Wi-Spy case.

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The Federal Communications Commission’s investigation into data-collection missteps connected with Google Inc.’s “Street View” mapping project is getting renewed attention following the release of a mostly unredacted version of the agency’s findings in the case.

The recently released unredacted findings appear to contradict Google’s claim that it inadvertently intercepted “payload data,” or the content of individuals’ internet communications, in the process of gathering information from Wi-Fi networks across the globe for the Street View project.

The document shows that, during preparations for the Street View effort, a Google engineer shared emails with colleagues at the firm revealing that he designed software for the project that was capable of collecting payload data.

Senate Hearing Urged.

The new revelations have prompted Consumer Watchdog, a Washington-based advocacy group, to call for a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, which is chaired by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.).

“The FCC order shows that substantial questions about the Wi-Spy scandal remain unanswered and that is largely because the engineer responsible for writing the code that gathered payload data invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify,” John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s privacy project director, said in a letter to Franken, dated April 30.

Simpson urged the subcommittee to offer immunity to the engineer in question in exchange for his testimony. In addition, he said that Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page should be required to explain the corporate culture that allowed the scandal to happen in the first place.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

FCC Imposed $25,000 Fine.

On April 13, the FCC quietly published a heavily redacted “apparent notice of liability” [DA 12-592] that detailed findings of the agency’s investigation into the Google Street View debacle.

According to the FCC’s notice, Google “deliberately impeded and delayed” the agency’s Street View investigation, launched in November 2010, by failing to provide requested documents, resulting in a $25,000 fine. The company’s alleged infractions included delaying its production of emails and other communications.

Ultimately, however, the agency said it could find no evidence that Google broke the law when it intercepted payload data as part of the Street View effort.

“There is no clear precedent for applying Section 705(a) of the Communications Act to Wi-Fi communications at issue here,” the FCC said in the notice. “Morever, because Engineer Doe permissibly asserted his constitutional right not to testify, significant factual questions bearing on the application of Section 705(a) to the Street View project cannot be answered on the record of this investigation.”

The Federal Trade Commission dropped an investigation into the matter in October 2010, citing privacy commitments from Google.

The mostly unredacted FCC notice is available at http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/91652398.

These Street View cars are the ones that drive around snapping photos of your streets for the Google Maps Street View program. With these cars for an extended period it was found that Google was also collecting Wi-fi network names, usernames of unsecured users accessing these networks, and very possibly more than that. The man we’re speaking about today created a software by the name of NetStumbler which was, to quote home, the “world’s first usable ‘Wardriving’ application for Windows” and a “de facto wireless security tool used by hundreds of thousands of people.”

This is not the same software used by Google’s Street View cars, but this software does appear now to have the same capabilities. Wardriving is the act of driving around your neighborhood looking for unsecured wireless networks to access with your computer. According to an April 13th report this year, Street View cars driving between 2007 and 2010 had collected more than 200GB of “payload data” including Wi-fi information.

Engineer Doe has been named by the FCC as having at least twice told his superiors and colleagues that the payload data being collected by Street View vehicles contradicted what Google had previously stated they were collecting.

“Google made clear for the first time that Engineer Doe’s software was deliberately written to capture payload data.” – FCC

A letter written by John Simpson, privacy project director for the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog on the 30th of April spoke on this subject. It was addressed to Senator Al Franken, a proponent of getting Google to reveal what they’d actually collected here before, saying that wished Franken to grant Engineer Doe immunity from prosecution. If indeed the engineer at hand were granted immunity, he would be much more likely to testify in the case which was, as Simpson claims, “the largest wiretapping effort in history.” Simpson wanted Franken and the rest of the world to know the dangers in this situation.

“The FCC order shows a troubling a portrait of a company where an engineer could run wild with software code that violates the privacy of tens of millions people worldwide, but the corporate culture of ‘Engineers First’ prevented corporate counsel or other engineers from stopping the privacy violations.” – Simpson

Have a peek at our timeline below to continue following the Street View cars around the earth, and be sure to keep up with attention here at the FCC case – it could be monumental!

The Google engineer behind the software code used to collect wireless network data and personal information in connection with the company’s Street View program has been identified as a software maker who has been with the search engine giant since 2003.

The New York Times, quoting an anonymous former investigator for a state that was doing its own probe of Google’s Street View program, reported April 30 that Marius Milner was the “Engineer Doe” mentioned in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) report on its investigation, and the person Google laid the blame on for the Street View vehicles collecting personal data from millions of people in dozens of countries.

In his LinkedIn profile, Milner said he has been a software engineer with Google since 2003 and with Google-owned YouTube since 2008. He also created software called NetStumbler, which is designed to detect WiFi networks and collect information on them, including their signal strength and whether they’re secure. He wrote that NetStumbler is the “world’s first usable ‘Wardriving’ application for Windows” and that it is now a “de facto wireless security tool used by hundreds of thousands of people.”

Wardriving refers to the practice of driving around looking for WiFi networks.

Before arriving at Google, Milner also worked for Avaya and Lucent Technologies.

Google’s Street View program has come under scrutiny both in the United States and in Europe after it was learned that between 2007 and 2010, the program’s vehicles had collected personal data—such as passwords, emails, text messages and users’ Internet usage histories—along with other WiFi information. In its April 13 report, the FCC said that the Street View vehicles had collected more than 200GB of such “payload data.”

The data on the WiFi networks was being used to help Google create better location-based services, company officials have said. Street View is a program designed to take photos of streets throughout the world and make them available online.

However, Google officials initially denied that payload data had been collected, as well. They later admitted that the Street View cars had collected such personal information, and laid the blame at the feet of a rogue engineer that they said put that capability into the software on his own accord. Neither Google nor the FCC would name the engineer, who was referred to as “Engineer Doe” in the commission’s report.

But the agency noted in the report that Engineer Doe had at least twice told colleagues—including a supervising manager in the Street View program—that this payload data was being collected, contradicting Google officials’ earlier statements.

In their report, FCC officials said they couldn’t determine whether Google had violated any laws, but said that Google had impeded the investigation by not fully cooperating and fined the company $25,000. The commissioners also said it would be difficult to get the full story about what happened because Engineer Doe asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and declined to answer investigators’ questions.

Google officials denied hampering the FCC’s investigation, but said they would not dispute the fine. Some in the tech industry scoffed at the size of the fine, considering the billions that Google rakes in every quarter.

“It has to be said, considering the privacy storm that came out of the Street View data breach, Google has got away remarkably lightly,” Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security software company Sophos, said in an April 30 post on the company’s blog. “For a company of Google’s size, a $25,000 fine is going to feel like a minor slap on the wrist.”

In a letter April 30, John Simpson, privacy project director for the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, urged Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, to conduct hearings into “the Google Wi-Spy incident that will finally get to the bottom of what was the largest wiretapping effort in history.”

Simpson urged Franken to grant Engineer Doe immunity from prosecution so that he can testify and to call Google CEO Larry Page to testify.

Simpson disagreed with Google’s view that the FCC’s report exonerated the company from any wrongdoing, noting that the engineer did not testify and adding that questions about the data collecting remain.

“The FCC order shows a troubling a portrait of a company where an engineer could run wild with software code that violates the privacy of tens of millions people worldwide, but the corporate culture of ‘Engineers First’ prevented corporate counsel or other engineers from stopping the privacy violations,” he wrote.

Several European countries have determined that Google’s Street View program violated their privacy laws.

Google, facing antitrust scrutiny in Washington, D.C., spent more than $5 million on lobbying in the quarter, trailing only AT&T and conglomerate General Electric.

Google’s lobbying expenses have skyrocketed in the past year, rising from $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2011 to $3.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to lobbying disclosure documents made available by the Office of the Clerk for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ranking No. 4 among businesses in lobbying expenses for the first quarter of 2012 was Comcast, at $4.6 million. Verizon was No. 5, at $4.5 million, spending more than pharmaceutical powerhouse Merck, at just under $4.5 million, oil giant Exxon Mobile, at $4.2 million, and major government contractors Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

Lobbying expenses include salaries of lobbyists, media campaigns, research and other spending focused on influencing the outcome of legislation.

A representative of AT&T didn’t respond to a request for comments on the company’s lobbying expenses.

Google defended its lobbying efforts. “As we have seen over the last year, there are a number of technology issues being debated in Washington,” a spokeswoman said in an email. “These are important issues and it should be expected that we would want to help people understand our business — the work we do to keep the Internet open, to encourage innovation, and to create economic opportunity.”

Google critic Consumer Watchdog said the company’s increased lobbying expenses show it has bought into the “corrupt Washington power game.

“Google claims its motto is, ‘don’t be evil,’ but the amount of cash they are throwing around demonstrates an astounding cynicism,” John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, said in an email.

Although AT&T and Google sometimes come down on opposite sides of issues such as net neutrality, the two companies appear to be more focused on looking out for their own interests than in fighting each other, said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.

“AT&T is trying to corner the mobile and cable carrier delivery markets in the U.S., while Google is trying to corner the Internet and mobile advertising markets,” he said in an email. “They are often on opposite sides of many policy issues, but rather than duking it out, I believe the big money is really spent for each companies’ growth to corner their respective markets.”

Both companies are focused on growth, Court added. The lobbying expenses are “about power, money and conquest more than policy differences,” he said.

Google is a new entrant into the list of top lobbying spenders. In 2011, General Electric led all companies in lobbying spending, at $26.3 million followed by Blue Cross/Blue Shield, ConocoPhillips, AT&T and Comcast. Including trade groups in the list, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce topped all lobbying spending in 2011, at $66.4 million, according to OpenSecrets.org.

AT&T’s lobbying disclosure forum listed several issues the company lobbied lawmakers about. The company talked to lawmakers about the DNS blocking provisions in controversial copyright bills the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), and it lobbied on several health-care bills.

AT&T, which abandoned its plan to buy mobile competitor T-Mobile USA in the last quarter of 2011, also focused on telecom and mobile tax legislation, on cybersecurity and online privacy bills, and on legislation to bring more mobile spectrum to market.

Google opposed SOPA and PIPA in its lobbying efforts. It also focused on cybersecurity legislation, on online privacy and tracking bills, and on free trade agreements, according to its lobbying disclosure form.

A handful of trade groups also spent more than $5 million on lobbying during the first quarter. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a major supporter of SOPA and PIPA, spent $20.2 million on lobbying during the quarter. The National Association of Realtors spent $6.1 million, the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform spent $6 million and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the American Farm Bureau Federation each spent about $5.3 million.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, representing cable broadband and TV providers, spent $4.3 million on lobbying during the quarter.

Other tech companies reporting lobbying expenses for the quarter included Microsoft, at $1.8 million, Hewlett-Packard, at $1.6 million, IBM at $1.5 million, and Oracle at $1.1 million. Facebook and Apple remain relatively small players in the Washington lobbying game, spending $650,000 and $500,000 respectively.

Facebook spent just $41,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010, growing to $230,000 in the first quarter of 2011.

SANTA MONICA, CA – Consumer Watchdog today called for a Senate hearing into the Google Wi-Spy scandal and urged that a key figure known in a Federal Communications Commission report as “Engineer Doe” be granted immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony.