When it rains, it pours: Google has taken a bit of criticism and drawn the attention of a number of members of Congress for its role in "Safarigate," or accusations that Google bypassed the privacy settings on Apple's Safari web browser to track iPhone and iPad usage. But that's not the only branch of government with which the company will soon be contending.

According to a report from Bloomberg, a Safari user in Illinois has filed the first class-action lawsuit against Google for its role in the Safari mix-up – alleging that Google's "willful and knowing actions" violated federal wiretapping laws, among other statutes.

While Google's declined to comment about the lawsuit itself, filed Friday, the company has gone on record with a few comments about its role in the Safari mix-up – an act that the Wall Street Journal's initial report, "mischaracterizes," Google claims.

To allow users to tap into Google's "+1" capabilities and share content on Google Plus, Google, "created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google's servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalization."

"However, the Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser. We didn't anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It's important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information," according to Google's official statement.

But that explanation hasn't been enough to appease Matthew Soble, the Illinois man who's seeking class-action status for those "whose default privacy settings on the web browser software produced by Apple, known as Safari, were knowingly circumvented by Google."

It hasn't been enough to appease Congress, either. Yesterday, Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton, co-chairmen of the Bi-Partisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, and Cliff Sterns, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google's Safari issue violates the company's recent settlement regarding Google Buzz – one in which Google is effectively prohibited from, "future privacy misrepresentations."

And they aren't the only lawmakers inquiring.

"This practice may have violated the company's own stated privacy practices," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said, according to Broadcasting & Cable. "I fully intend to look into this matter and determine the extent to which this practice was used by Google and other third parties to circumvent consumer choice."

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