A member of the British Parliament on Thursday proposed an Internet bill of rights that would give citizens an easy and affordable means of protecting their Internet privacy. The proposal was prompted by Google's recent Wi-Fi data collection controversy.

Robert Halfon, a conservative member of Parliament who was elected earlier this year, said this bill of rights would initially work as a "semi-voluntary code." Much like the British Medical Association or the British Law Society oversees those communities in the country, the U.K. needs a similar society for Internet privacy, he said.

This would be preferable to "immediately implementing state action," Halfon said. Fellow member Ian Lucas, however, was not convinced self-regulation would be effective and pushed for stronger action.

"It's absolutely crucial that we have an intense consideration of where we are – that we consult very, very widely … of course with the industry and the ISPs but with the general public too about how we deal with this very, very difficult problem," Lucas said. "I think people need to know much more about the scale of the information they are retaining."

Halfon and Lucas's remarks occurred during a Thursday meeting of Parliament that was broadcast online. They come after Google admitted in May that equipment attached to its Street View cars had accidentally collected data traveling over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. On Friday, Google admitted that that data contained entire e-mails, URLs, and passwords.

That prompted the British Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on Monday to re-open its investigation into Google's Wi-Fi data collection. In July, the ICO said it reviewed some of the data collected by Google and that it was satisfied that it did not include any meaningful personal data about residents in the region.

Halfon criticized the ICO for what he considered to be a lazy investigation and a "public whitewash" of the facts. "Why was this left to private groups and individuals?" he asked.

Halfon said he fears a "privatized surveillance society [where] ordinary people have no right of redress and no possible sanction." He was skeptical that a company as big and technologically advanced as Google did not know what it was doing.

He speculated that Google collected the Wi-Fi data because "it was of use to Google for commercial purposes," an accusation Google has denied.

Halfon said he met with Google executives in the London office several weeks ago, at which time they gave "the strong impression that the Wi-Fi details were very basic and did not amount to much." Given that Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research at Google, then reversed course on Friday and said personal data had been collected, "it is rather hard to take his word for it," Halfon said.

Halfon insisted that he is "no Internet Luddite" and said he is an "enthusiast for Google products," but that enthusiasm does not extend to Street View.

"In many ways, Street View is a brilliant innovation … but street mapping has been done without anyone's explicit permission," he said.

While supporters argue that anyone can walk down a public street and snap a photo of someone's house, Halfon said there is a "difference in scale and commercial interest" when it comes to Street View. "Google is not sight seeing," he said. "Google implied that blackening out houses in Street View would make things look unseemly. My answer to that is, so what? If aesthetics [suffer] in the pursuit of liberty, that's a good thing."

Halfon said Street View is "much more dangerous than state surveillance" because "there is a social contract between governments and citizens" but the same contract does not exist between companies and citizens. "This time it has gone too far."

For its part, Google has apologized for the Wi-Fi data collection, made several changes to its privacy policies, and pledged to delete all the data it collected. Users who do not want their homes on Street View can request to have it blurred via the "report a problem" link on any Street View image.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt got into some hot water last week when he jokingly suggested on CNN that people who do not like Street View can "just move." He later said he misspoke and reiterated that Google will remove any offending images.

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. announced that it has closed its investigation into Google's Wi-Fi data collection, saying that its recent privacy changes have satisfied its concerns.