A bipartisan trio of House members wants the Federal Trade Commission to again probe the search and mobile advertising giant after it was revealed that the hidden code allowed Google to track the sites Safari users visit when they believed they were browsing privately.

And last week an Illinois man filed a federal lawsuit against Google, claiming its actions violate federal wiretapping laws.

Noting Personal

Google told us last week that the mischievous code, discovered by a Stanford University computer researcher, Jonathan Mayer and verified by the Wall Street Journal was "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."

Google stopped using the code, the company said, when it determined that it was enabling cookies, which allow web sites to track visitors for advertisers. It said the link was intended to make sure that personally identifying information was not collected.

That explanation doesn't suit Republicans Joe Barton of Texas and Cliff Stearns of Florida and Democrat Cliff Stearns. In a letter to FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz, the trio noted "Google's practices could have a wide sweeping impact because Safari is a major web browser used by millions of Americans. As members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we are interested in any actions the FTC has taken or plans to take to investigate whether Google has violated the terms of its consent agreement."

The Safari flap comes on the heels of Google's announcement that it consolidated its terms of service to cover all of its services last month, and after it automatically opted millions of users into...