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Google Street View Logs Wi-Fi Networks, MAC Addresses
An anonymous reader points to this story at The Register that says "Google is collecting more than just images when they drive around for the Street View service. 'Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.' There's a choice quote at the end: 'Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said Internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'"
Google Maps provides WLAN-based location triangulation, on both phones and wi-fi capable computers. To do that, they look up the MAC addresses of visible wi-fi hotspots in a location database. Google is not the only company that does this via wardriving, and they at last have the sense to keep it secure enough that nobody can just look up your MAC address and get your geographic location. Unlike certain other wi-fi positioning systems.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, actually, he said that if you have $SOMETHING to hide then doing stuff concerned with $SOMETHING on t'internet is not a smart idea.
Or in other words, "if you have something to hide, hide it". Privacy through obscurity is not an option on an indexed resource like t'internet.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
He is hypocritical...
Check out the following article:
http://news.cnet.com/Google-balances-privacy,-reach/2100-1032_3-5787483.html?tag=nl
Reaction from Google? CNET is barred one year from google.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Google-Angry-at-CNET-66164
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Wardriving is not 'theft of bandwidth'. That's piggybacking.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
http://www.pcworld.com/article/184446/googles_schmidt_roasted_for_privacy_comments.html
Basically he's saying it's not as big a deal as everyone's making it out to be if they publish it on the Internet, because the US government is legally empowered to confiscate all of it without much due process.
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
That is the actual quote. I am pretending nothing.
Except, you know, the quote given in the summary and article isn't what he said. What he actually said was "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." To me, that's quite a bit different from the quoted "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide." At worst, I would take his actual quote to mean that trying to hide illegal and/or amoral acts is impossible in the internet age, at least if such acts are done on the internet.
You are also misquoting him by omission. There is a comma at the end of the sentence - not a period. The whole quote is as follows:
I think his quote is entirely appropriate and not scary at all. If you are doing something and you don't want anyone to know about it, you should consider whether or not you ought to be doing it in the first place. That's almost Kant's categorical imperative; instead of "would I be okay if everyone else did this", it's "would I be okay if everyone knew I did this". Not quite as strong a basis for a moral system, but still something to consider.
If you decide that yes, you ought to be doing this but it should also be a secret, don't put it on the Internet. Nothing on the Internet is a secret. That's all he's saying.