Australia has denied that it is picking on Google over its stance against net filtering. The former UK penal colony has become one of the only countries in the world to consider criminal charges against the search engine for it gathering wi-fi data.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the privacy investigation announced on Sunday had been ordered by the attorney-general, and mirrored similar action taken against Google in other countries. Conroy said that Google did not believe that Australian laws applied to them.

"They say, 'hey, we are based in the US, we don't care what the European Union says, we don't care what individual jurisdictions in Europe say and we don't care what the Australian Government says'," claims Conroy.

Conroy accused Google of deliberately collecting private data while taking pictures for its street maps. Google insists it gathered the information by accident and promised to cooperate with the police investigation. Conroy last month launched personal attacks on Schmidt and said Google set out to collect private information during the Street View project.

However Conroy has good reason to hate Google. The outfit has led the widespread criticism of his treasured plan filter the internet aimed at blocking material such as child pornography and extremist literature and anyone else that Conroy disagrees with.