Investigators have learned that a handful of Google staff members knew that one of their engineer colleagues had written a program which was capable of snooping on wireless data networks.
America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been investigating the gathering of data by Google in the process of its cars obtaining information for its Street View mapping service.
But despite this disclosure, the investigators found the information was kept secret from senior staff at the search giant, the BBC is reporting.
It comes a couple of weeks after Google was fined $25,000 (£15,300) for not co-operating with the FCC's investigation
