Two weeks after asking Google for more information on its Street View Wi-Fi data collection, Connecticut's attorney general on Monday announced that his office will lead a multi-state investigation into the practice.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said his office's "investigation will consider whether laws may have been broken and whether changes to state and federal statutes may be necessary."

Google last month admitted that Wi-Fi data collection devices attached to its Street View cars had inadvertently collected user data that was transmitted over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google collected Wi-Fi data to improve the performance of its location-based services. It has since suspended Wi-Fi data collection via Street View cars.

Blumenthal said he recently held a conference call with more than 30 state officials about the issue, and he expects a significant number of states to participate in the investigation.

"Street View cannot mean Complete View – invading home and business computer networks and vacuuming up personal information and communications," Blumenthal said in a statement. "Consumers have a right and a need to know what personal information – which could include e-mails, Web browsing and passwords – Google may have collected, how and why. Google must come clean, explaining how and why it intercepted and saved private information broadcast over personal and business wireless networks."

"It was a mistake for us to include code in our software that collected payload data, but we believe we did nothing illegal," Google said in a Monday statement. "We're working with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns."

Blumenthal asked Google to "provide a complete and comprehensive explanation of how this unauthorized data collection happened."

His office has also asked Google for additional information, including whether the data was ever extracted, how unauthorized code became part of a Street View computer program, who inserted that code into the program, whether there have been instances of engineers inserting unauthorized code into other Google products, and why Google saved data it said was collected accidentally.

Earlier this month, Google published an independent audit of its data collection practices, which was conducted by Stroz Friedberg. Looking at the source code alone, the organization could not determine if Google was capturing data packets that included any personally identifiable information.

In a letter to House lawmakers released later that week, Google said that its conduct was legal because the networks were unencrypted, but said that did not condone what happened. Google also said that its software scans the networks so quickly (five per second) that it is unlikely that any complete data came through.

Data that was collected, Google said, was only examined twice in the last three years – when the individual engineer designed the software and when Google became aware that data may have been collected from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks and a single security engineer tested the data to verify that this was the case.

The issue has prompted concern from a variety of privacy groups and data commissions around the world. Google recently agreed to hand over collected data to German, French and Spanish data protection authorities. Google has already destroyed data collected in Ireland, Denmark, and Austria. Italian, Canadian, and Australian officials are also investigating.

In his original letter, Blumenthal asked for specific information relating to Connecticut residents. He has not yet heard from Google.

Blumenthal is currently running for the Connecticut Senate seat being vacated by departing Sen. Christopher Dodd. He has also been vocal in his opposition to the adult content allowed on Craigslist.