Last week, Google admitted that their Street View cars scooped up emails and passwords from Wi Fi networks as they cruised around. The company is "mortified," and has implemented changes it says will improve data security among its employees.

Google says it learned important lessons from David Barksdale, the engineer who spied on underage teenagers via company servers. And apparently one of those lessons is, "don't talk about engineers who spy on underage teenagers."

Teen-stalking Google engineer David Barksdale could face up to five years in prison if he were to be convicted of violating the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which prohibits the intentional interception of electronic communication.

Google issued a short statement yesterday confirming our report about David Barksdale, the ex-Google engineer fired for violating users' privacy and spying on minors. But the statement did little to answer some big questions about Barksdale's conduct and Google's policies.

David Barksadale, whose online teen-stalking exploits we detailed yesterday, was actually the second engineer fired by Google for snooping on users. He was, however, the first to target kids.

Google released a statement confirming it fired teen-stalking engineer David Barksdale for "breaking Google's strict internal privacy policies," as Gawker first reported earlier today. Our original exclusive, about Barksdale spying on minors' Google Voice and Talk accounts, has been updated.

We entrust Google with our most private communications because we assume the company takes every precaution to safeguard our data. It doesn't. A Google engineer spied on four underage teens for months before the company was notified of the abuses.