heh. I've seen this too, and it's all much ado about nothing, so to say.
*puts on his Developer hat*
Likely what happened is somebody's little pet programming project, a Proof of Concept chunk of code that just grabs raw wireless packets, got checked into the source code repository and got included on accident when they loaded the software onto the Street View cars' systems. This kind of thing is pretty easy to have happen if you're not careful with your code check-ins, because even at the small company I work for, we have thousands of files in our product's repository. At a place like Google, it could be millions. It's up to the developers to be careful when working with a production repository.
*takes off his Developer hat*
Long story short, I'd wager this was an honest mistake and they're lucky somebody caught the software running and was able to shut it down. It's a classic fledging developer mistake, hell, I've lost track of how many times I've caused the server that builds our software here at work to nearly burst into flames with my own idiocy.
Maybe it's just me (ok, in my experience it's definitely just me), but I just don't get worked up over this kind of stuff anymore. I have more important things to give a hoot about, like sanitation or making sure my wife is properly caffeinated (Rule #1: When SWMBO is happy, the whole house is happy!)
