Google Street View Logs Wi-Fi Networks, MAC Addresses

Tell Your Wireless ... by WrongSizeGlass · 2010-04-23 00:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

... that it has just been 'Googled'.

This doesn't look good on the surface ... and reeks of Google's Buzz privacy blunders all over again.

Why can't Google (and everyone else for that matter) just stick to the personal data people are foolish enough to hand over to the web? This type of action puts them on the edge of WiFi hackers who are "just seeing if it could be done" ... except for that they're doing it for tens of thousands of personal and business WiFi networks.

Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by grantek · 2010-04-23 00:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Basically Schmidt's quote can be better worded as saying "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they're broadcasting something they have to hide".
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by tagno25 · 2010-04-23 00:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

What they are doing is not even questionable, it is completely legal. They are just making a Wi-Fi map via scanning, not attempting to connect to the Wi-Fi.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Sockatume · 2010-04-23 00:29 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by poetmatt · 2010-04-23 00:30 · Score: 3, Insightful

okay, so how is this different than any other wardriver or just anyone using wifi and how is it any more "enforceable"? Your computer keeps track of MAC addresses. There are apps that can be put on your phone to track mac addresses and open/close status while driving along with gps, and it's public information.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by tagno25 · 2010-04-23 00:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

Broadcasting? By making a search within Google?
Sorry but for example I rather keep the sex I have between me and my girlfriend our own private thing and not let everyone see it, or have videos of it. If I want to keep that to myself, according to Schmidt I shouldn't be having sex at all.
No, you shouldn't be recording the sex and placing the videos in a public location.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Goaway · 2010-04-23 00:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, Schmidt's quote can be better worded as saying "If you have something to hide, you shouldn't show it to the internet, because police can and will request that information from any provider, including Google".
But that doesn't sound at all as threatening, so let's just pretend he said something else!
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Shakrai · 2010-04-23 00:43 · Score: 3, Funny

But my hard drive was full. I had no where else to save my sex tape other than Youtube ;)

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by clsours · 2010-04-23 00:54 · Score: 4, Funny

Does anyone have the actual citation? Cause that would be kinda nice. http://xkcd.com/285/

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Shakrai · 2010-04-23 00:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

wardriving involves the theft of bandwidth, which is a commodity.
I didn't know the CEO of Verizon had a /. account. Welcome aboard sir! Or are you the CEO of AT&T?

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I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by ElectricTurtle · 2010-04-23 00:56 · Score: 4, Informative

Wardriving is not 'theft of bandwidth'. That's piggybacking.

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by xtracto · 2010-04-23 01:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

Or worse yet... it is like me driving around and logging (e.g. writing in a paper) the numbers of the houses...
And then some guy getting mad at me because I identified that the number of his house is in X street!! "OMG you are profiling me!"

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Dishevel · 2010-04-23 01:08 · Score: 3, Informative

Of course you are right. Though we do know that through the context of the conversation he was having he meant what the GP posted.

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by FlyingBishop · 2010-04-23 01:15 · Score: 4, Informative

http://www.pcworld.com/article/184446/googles_schmidt_roasted_for_privacy_comments.html

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.
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.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by e2d2 · 2010-04-23 01:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

How does listening to publicly broadcasted information "steal bandwidth"?
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Jawn98685 · 2010-04-23 01:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

This doesn't look good on the surface ... and reeks of Google's Buzz privacy blunders all over again. Why can't Google (and everyone else for that matter) just stick to the personal data people are foolish enough to hand over to the web? This type of action puts them on the edge of WiFi hackers who are "just seeing if it could be done" ... except for that they're doing it for tens of thousands of personal and business WiFi networks.
My first reaction was the same - "How dare they play so fast and loose with 'private information' like that...", but on reflection, I'm not sure it's a bad thing. My house has wifi. It is secured well enough that I don't need to worry about he neighbors borrowing my bandwidth or a drive-by spam cannon causing me grief. Several of my neighbors..., not so much. It's 2010, folks. The risk of running an open wifi is well-known, as are the means to secure it, and still, most wifi routers/access points come out of the box with little or no security enabled.

Maybe it is time to "raise awareness" of this reality. Of course, it's not Google's job to do this, and I doubt that they had anything so altruistic in mind when they decided to collect and publish this information, but I do hope that it will have that effect to some small degree, at least.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Goaway · 2010-04-23 01:32 · Score: 2, Informative

"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."
Perhaps you can point out where in that he's saying "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide"?
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Goaway · 2010-04-23 01:33 · Score: 5, Informative

"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.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by MozeeToby · 2010-04-23 01:36 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Goaway · 2010-04-23 01:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

No, since the topic is mostly illegal actions, which should be obvious from the reference to the Patriot Act and requests by authorities.
And ever if it wasn't, that does still does not equal "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide". No part of that statement talks about not worrying.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by 0100010001010011 · 2010-04-23 01:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

They've enabled locations in HTML5. I was playing around with "Dive into HTML 5" and for fun clicked on the "Locate me". It was dead on. Even though I was going through a Proxy server (so I know they didn't find me through IP). Scroll to the bottom, it's "A complete live example"
Prey Project using it as the geo locator for theft recovery. I've had Orbicule's Undercover for a while, and they use Skyhook. Prey Project is 100% open source (all bash scripts more or less) and digging through they're using Google's location APIs to locate devices.
So basically Google now has a 'sky hook' type service that anyone can use for free. Not just that. Every single smart phone that doesn't have GPS built in, now has a 'near location' enabled. Meaning that google can provide location based results even without a GPS.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Zocalo · 2010-04-23 02:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yes, but they can do that with the SSIDs, which are more likely to have extra uses as you can look for common service provider SSIDs to annotate your map with, say, the nearest retail chain offering a complimentary WiFi service without having to mooch. The only uses I can see for capturing the MACs is to tell identical SSIDs such as "LinkSys" apart or as a means of tracking users (or groups of users) for their Ad business.

Lets say that a given computer's MAC is known to exist in a given town. Now imagine if Google somehow included the MAC of that computer in the payload traffic going to one of Google's services. Put the two together and you have a superb means of providing not only targetted adverts, but location aware ones as well. Best of all (for Google), there's no Cookies required.

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by BlackSnake112 · 2010-04-23 02:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sorry but recording all MAC addresses? Google's "Do no evil" just went out the door. There is no reason for Google to record the MAC addresses of devices.
Can people do scans and get that information, yes. The catch is they should have to do that scan to get it. ISPs most likely already know the MAC addresses, and they should it is their network.
Google is acting like it does not have to follow the rules.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by clsours · 2010-04-23 02:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I asked the author of the piece for the quote, he sent me this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/

Of course the above mentions that the interview was on CNBC, but not the date or a link to a CNBC (that I can find).

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by Requiem18th · 2010-04-23 03:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, it's more like, if there is a crack in the wall you have agreed to Google selling tapes of you having sex, if you didn't wan't to be recorded you shouldn't be broadcasting it!
I also got your girlfriend's moaning as my ringtone thanks to Google Street Laser Microphone, thankfully I didn't have to listen to weeks of mundane stuff to get that ringtone because I got a graph of your sad, appalling sexual life thanks to Google Street Thermo-cam.
I jest but the idea is that you can't claim I agreed to broadcast information I didn't knew I was broadcasting, and that's exactly what Google apologetics want to claim.

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Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by IICV · 2010-04-23 03:35 · Score: 4, Informative

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:

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
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.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... by shutdown+-p+now · 2010-04-23 04:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sorry but recording all MAC addresses? Google's "Do no evil" just went out the door. There is no reason for Google to record the MAC addresses of devices.
Actually, they do have a reason - it's called "WiFi geolocation", and can be used in conjunction with cell towers to pinpoint one's position much more precisely than towers alone can do. It's used in such capacity in Android, for example.
I've also heard that iPad (at least the non-3G variety) also uses WiFi geolocation.
In any case, I don't see the problem. On Slashdot, it has been said countless times in the past (e.g. with respect to websites being crawled when they don't want it to happen) that "if you put it in public, it's public". Well, guess what, that's precisely what a wireless access point does, if you tell it to broadcast its ESSID! It's not even something of the "unlocked door" variety, it's literally actively transmitting this information for everyone to hear. Noting it down is absolutely not a privacy threat - not anymore than the broadcast itself is in the first place!

Ignorance abounds by QuantumG · 2010-04-23 00:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Wow. That's pretty shitty reporting, even for The Register. Yes, Google records SSIDs and (I guess) MAC addresses of wifi APs. That way they can estimate your position for Google Maps on a mobile device, even if you have no GPS on that device. This has been public knowledge for at least a year now.

In regards to Streetview itself and recording SSIDs and such, there is simply no privacy concerns. When you are in public, people can see you. When you broadcast signals, people can receive them. If you don't want to be seen, don't go out in public. If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.

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Re:Ignorance abounds by petes_PoV · 2010-04-23 00:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.
Broadcasting an SSID is a strictly local affair - maybe within a range of 50 metres, tops. Having Google store the SSID and its location makes it a global issue. It makes it practical for the sort of government department we'd ALL prefer to keep away to hold and analyse this data.
However, the biggest problem I have with this sort of collection of data is that I was not asked if I minded having information regarding equipment I own collected by a third party, who then hold it and may pass it on to others without my permission, or even my knowledge.

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Re:Ignorance abounds by Tim+C · 2010-04-23 00:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you don't want to be seen, don't go out in public.
And yet many countries have laws against following someone around, noting down their movements.
If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.
I don't care if people see my SSID. I may care that a company (which makes its money from selling targeted advertising) has recorded it and stored it in a database along with location details, photographs, etc. That is fundamentally different from my neighbours and casual passers-by being able to see a SSID of "home" as they pass my house.

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Re:Ignorance abounds by Rogerborg · 2010-04-23 01:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

they can estimate your position for Google Maps on a mobile device, even if you have no GPS on that device. This has been public knowledge for at least a year now.
2+ years. It's a great application, with no more privacy implications than if you were to call someone with local knowledge and describe the landmarks that you could see near you.
Nobody, least of all Google, cares who owns "BT Home Connect 9923123" or "Pr0n4Free4EvarLan", they just care that there's a SSID in that area with that name.
Cue objections from Tin Foil Hatters who don't want The Man to be able to describe the outside of their parent's basement, lest their very souuuuls be stolen and sold to, god, I don't know, the Saucer People.
Fill me in, Hatters. To what Evil use could this information be put? Try to use reasons that might actually be valid on Planet Earth, if you please.

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Re:Ignorance abounds by NEW22 · 2010-04-23 02:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

Are you saying there needs to be a special law in place to prevent people and/or businesses from writing down your publicly broadcasted SSID? Maybe people should be fined or jailed? What would be the parameters on what you think should be possible?
Personally, I have a hard time conjuring up a reason to care that someone might have this info, so could you maybe paint your nightmare scenario? Is it something along the lines of "Through data-mining Google has been able to correlate my user accounts with my RL address and is guessing that it has my Access Point recorded, and my Google searches will have ads for Wireless Routers"? Or "I fear this database will become public, and people will use Google Maps and this data to stop outside my house and leech my internet, hack my system, and frame me with child porn, which is terrifying, but not so terrifying that I want to secure my Access Point"? I'm not sure what the fears are here.

WLAN location triangulation by Sockatume · 2010-04-23 00:24 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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Re:WLAN location triangulation by epiphani · 2010-04-23 01:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

I personally discovered this when my phone started insisting that I was living at my old apartment whenever I was at home.
My old place is halfway across town, and I moved nearly a year ago. Yet whenever you can see my access point...

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The Reciprocal by Anonymous Coward · 2010-04-23 00:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

If I don't have anything to hide, then what logical reason do you have to spy on me?

Of course this applies to private companies just as much as government.

And... by MrZilla · 2010-04-23 00:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

'Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'

And what if I DO have something to hide? Will you then remove me from all of your databases and registers?

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Re:And... by JustOK · 2010-04-23 00:40 · Score: 3, Funny

what are you trying to hide?

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Re:And... by MonoSynth · 2010-04-23 00:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

And what if I have nothing to hide for the current government but don't get the assurance that today's laws are tomorrow's laws?
With enough information in the hands of governments, it's very easy to change a law, criminalize something that was perfectly legal and find and eliminate most of the 'criminals' under those new laws.
I know I'm kind of invoking Godwin's law here, but in 1939 it was perfectly legal to be Jewish here in the Netherlands. In the 1930s the Dutch government made an almost perfect register of the whole population, so in 1940 it was very easy for the Nazis to eliminate almost all the Dutch Jews.
Re:And... by mcgrew · 2010-04-23 00:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Those people who say "if you have nothing to hide" have something to hide -- their ignorance or contempt for your intelligence. There are a lot of things that are not illegal you don't want known; adultery is legal in Illinois. Even in states where it may not be illegal, you still wouldn't want your girlfriend to know she's not the only one. You may be a closeted gay working for a right wing congresscritter, or a closeted conservative working for a left wing congresscritter. You might not want people to know that you watch Mickey Mouse cartoons. The list goes on.
Either Schmidt is stupid (and I don't buy that) or he thinks you are.

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Re:And... by tolgyesi · 2010-04-23 02:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

Here in Hungary the German minority was deported in 1946 based on a previous census where they answered honestly about mothertongue because it was a neutral information at the time the census was made.

Schmid by MancunianMaskMan · 2010-04-23 00:27 · Score: 5, Informative

Schmidt recently said internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'"

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.

I just don't see the issue by AdmiralXyz · 2010-04-23 00:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

I know I'm supposed to be outraged about Street View. I'm trying, I really am. But the outrage just isn't there.

It's (generally) not illegal to take one picture of a storefront from your car. It's not illegal to take two, or three. Nor is it illegal to put those pictures on the internet. Google is just taking this process and deploying it on a larger scale than anyone previously had the resources for. I think it's the same with wireless networks. YOU have chosen to blast your MAC address into the ether for anyone within a certain radius to record, so why should you be surprised when someone does?

Google is just acting as an army of men with clipboards, no single one of whom is doing anything wrong, and for me it doesn't follow that there's something wrong when they do it en masse, provided they stick to public roads and take the privacy precautions (blurring faces, etc.) they have been.

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Re:I just don't see the issue by betterunixthanunix · 2010-04-23 00:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

The problem is that it is so large, well organized, and that they have the capability to process the information in large quantities. A single person who happens to see some minute public detail of your life is probably going to forget it within an hour, but Google is collecting vast amounts of data for analysis. The situation changes when an "army of men with clipboards" is roaming around, then bringing their data back and combining it all. The odds are stacked against an individual who might want to keep certain details of their life private when an organization as large as Google is trying to pry their lives open.

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Re:I just don't see the issue by AdmiralXyz · 2010-04-23 00:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

The odds are stacked against an individual who might want to keep certain details of their life private when an organization as large as Google is trying to pry their lives open.
But Google isn't "prying", that's my point. They're collecting information that you have chosen to make available publicly, whether it's by placing it on the public Internet, or broadcasting it over EM waves where anyone nearby can pick it up. If you want privacy, don't announce your information in a public manner, and you will be off Google's radar. Google got blasted for Buzz (and deservedly so) because information that people thought they had selected as "private" was being made available, but that's not the issue here. If you're concerned with your MAC address being recorded, you need to learn how wireless networking works.

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Re:I just don't see the issue by Tim+C · 2010-04-23 00:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's (generally) not illegal to take one picture of a storefront from your car. It's not illegal to take two, or three. Nor is it illegal to put those pictures on the internet. Google is just taking this process and deploying it on a larger scale than anyone previously had the resources for.
There are things that can be done in the small scale that are not a problem, that become an issue when taken to the large scale. One example I deal with from time to time at work is aggregation of information - under the UK government's rules for handling of protectively marked ("classified") information, a collection of information each piece of which is marked at one classification, may together require a higher classification. For example, taken together, a collection of documents each marked at RESTRICTED may itself become CONFIDENTIAL (which significantly changes the way the collection is handled).
The fact that each individual photograph, etc is perfectly legal doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't serious privacy concerns surrounding building up such an all-encompassing database of them.
No, it doesn't follow that there *is* something wrong, but neither does it follow that there *is not*.

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Re:I just don't see the issue by betterunixthanunix · 2010-04-23 00:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem is that it is possible to extract private details of a person's life from a large database of public details. Yes, Google is prying -- not directly, but indirectly, by collecting and analyzing these details.

Even small details like MAC addresses may ultimately reveal a lot of private data about a person, particularly combined with other information (such as its geographic location?). No, nobody expects every single detail of their life to be private; at the same time, many of us do have secrets and private details of our lives which we never broadcast, but which may be revealed by the sort of activity that companies like Google are engaged in.

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Re:I just don't see the issue by Xest · 2010-04-23 01:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

The biggest concern I have with street view is:
a) Burglars no longer need to visit an area to scout it to check for targets. The common argument from the pro-street view group against this is that well anyone could come down and take a picture for the same effect- that's true, but here's the difference, using my house an example. I live on a cul-de-sac, to get to my house and take pictures without someone noticing a guy with a camera would take some doing, everyone on our street knows everyone else, if someone came down, and turned around, someone would see them. If there was a subsequent burglary, then there would be witnesses who could point the police in the right direction in terms of a number plate, or a description of a person, or person(s) looking dodgy. With street view this is gone, people can now scout our street without ever knowing, they can perform a burglary without anyone have ever seen anyone suspicious looking coming down the street to scout it. They can spend as much time as they want examining the images on street view for best ways to rob the houses, or steal a car or similar. As much as the pro-street view grouping likes to suggest that because the images are taken from public places, it doesn't decrease security or make things any easier for criminals, they are wrong, it does. Which takes me to the second point:
b) The street view camera is quite high up, when browsing around on street view in the UK down by my girlfriends grand mothers house, I followed along a road, and was amazed to see how many walls I could see over that I'd never seen before. One image showed right over a wall you can't normally see over into a person's french windows that aren't normally visible showing a nice big 50"+ flat screen TV and a bunch of games consoles and games in full view, that no one passing by in the street would have otherwise ever known was there. The camera was most certainly too high on the street view vehicles and nullifies somewhat the argument that the images were taken from places where people could normally take pictures- could is perhaps true, but would? No, no one was going to walk around on stilts, or sat on someone elses shoulders or similar to take pictures in what would otherwise be random places. Again, if they were criminals, and if they did this it would raise further suspicion. People would remember seeing the culprits around.
I understand the theory that street view doesn't cause any issues in theory because they are just taking images from public places, but it's a theory that simply doesn't map to reality. Anyone scouting an area physically will be seen, there will be witnesses, if they take pictures of people's houses there will be a lot of suspicion from residents, if they hang around getting a good look into people's houses, there will be suspicion. Nothing lets criminals plan out a highly profitable crime spree and even map their best exit routes without ever having to be seen quite like street view does.
In the UK, I think what fucked me off most recently about it is that street view drove past the SAS HQ on a public road and photographed that too, yet a couple of MPs complained saying it put the SAS HQ's security at risk. Google accepted this and removed the images- I mean, wtf? So it's only a security risk for one of the most heavily defended army bases in the UK full of the best trained troops in the world, but it's not a security risk for say some unarmed old pensioner whose house has been filmed as a prime burglary target? Even if the approach was consistent it would be something, yet even that's not the case.
All this is not to say I'm totally against it, I think it's a cool piece of technology and I think a dataset of the world in images that large could prove vital to building new image recognition technologies and so forth (i.e. improving Google Goggles), I think my real concern is that it's not something that was well planned out, there wasn't enough public consultation, it does raise issues, and those issues have not been discussed and see
Re:I just don't see the issue by Yvanhoe · 2010-04-23 01:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

Exactly. I think that when people blame Google for doing something clever and legal that they had not anticipated, they choose the wrong target for their anger. You think it is not normal Google can do that ? Well, maybe there is a need for a debate about privacy & the public place then. For too long, people suppose that the vastness of the "public space" works as an anonymizer. With video-surveillance, wireless-thingies tracking, etc... this becomes less and less the case. Soon we will have to assume that a simple google search under your name will reveal your address, the place where you go buy condoms, the place you entered yesterday evening, etc... It would be legal under the premise that the public space is, well, public. Is that something we want ? Maybe not, but then we don't have to be angry at google, we have to be angry at lawmakers and urge them to redefine what "privacy" means in legal terms.

The key factor that is changing is that in order to track someone, one used to have to spend considerable resources to spy him, to track his habits, etc... This practice was proactive and well defined. Now, tracking or spying someone can be an almost passive process. Put an antenna or a good cam in your street, and register bluetooth IDs of phones that pass by and use an OCR to capture all the car plates. New practices need new laws.

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The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Re:I just don't see the issue by betterunixthanunix · 2010-04-23 01:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

Except that it is not a crime to be "likely" to attack someone, and there are a lot of people who move to a new town to escape someone they believe is "likely" to attack them (think witness protection program). Do you really think a person who is certain harm may come to them, but who has no legal basis for pressing assault or harassment charges, should just sit around waiting until a crime is actually committed? Yes, believe it or not, these case do exist, they are not so uncommon, and when someone moves to a new town to escape danger they perceived in their old town, they should not have to stay indoors for the rest of their lives just because Google is sending a surveillance vans around the country.

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Palm trees and 8
Re:I just don't see the issue by tibit · 2010-04-23 01:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Burglars no longer need to visit an area to scout it to check for targets. The common argument from the pro-street view group against this is that well anyone could come down and take a picture for the same effect- that's true, but here's the difference, using my house an example. I live on a cul-de-sac, to get to my house and take pictures without someone noticing a guy with a camera would take some doing, everyone on our street knows everyone else, if someone came down, and turned around, someone would see them. If there was a subsequent burglary, then there would be witnesses who could point the police in the right direction in terms of a number plate, or a description of a person, or person(s) looking dodgy.
If you seriously believe that, you live in a fantasy.
If what you claim is true, then what was the make/model/plate# of the google street view van? Was the driver a male or female? How many of your all-the-time-alert neighbors saw it? After all, those things aren't exactly inconspicuous!
I live on a cul-de-sac, too. There's noone here during regular working hours. You could literally have a film crew here for 2-3 hours a day, and noone would know.
If your cul-de-sac has a house or two with retirees, or stay-at-home moms, I really doubt all they do is sit by the window the whole time, and write down every license plate number.
My bet is thus: if I wanted to, I'd just take an HD camcorder, give it to my wife in the passenger seat -- or, heck, to my kid on the back seat, one of them would take the shot, while I'd drive into the cul de sac, turn around, and drive out. I'd say my chances are 1:50 that anyone would recall an "out of place" car being there, 1:1000 that anyone would know the make/model, and 1:10'000 that someone would know how many people were in the car, that someone was filming, and the license plate #.
The reality is exactly opposite to what you insist: if I want to physically scout a location, I won't be seen, there will be no witnesses, and there will be no suspicion. Cameras these days are rather inconspicuous, even HD cameras. I can have one in my hat, and just walk around, with a kid or two in tow. Or I can just drive around with a dash camera. Heck, I could probably get something flat and inconspicuous-looking magnetically attached to one of the mailboxes around here, if I wanted to see the people's comings-and-goings in real time, from a safe distance.
About the only point you may have is that the high vantage point requires a sufficiently tall vehicle, and couldn't really be inconspicuously replicated without having a camera in, say, a gyroscopically stabilized ball. Maybe it's a good idea for a project! Let's see who can throw the ball higher in the air, kiddo! And when we come home, we can review how high it flew ;)

--
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Re:I just don't see the issue by canajin56 · 2010-04-23 03:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

Your neighborhood sounds horrifying if 24/7 you have people with binocs recording the plates of everybody who visits. There was an equally crazy "gated" community near where I lived. I walked down it, to see what it was like, see if it was worth the city park they bought and bulldozed to build it. Some guy with a notepad ran up to me "This is private property and just standing here will put you in jail, I know you're not visiting, there are no children allowed" and I said "Oh I'm just casing the place, what's your house number and when do you work?" he bolted, probably called 911 80 times. Scary scary 12 year old, was I. I know better now, of course. He doesn't work, that's why he can sit on his porch on constant guard against schoolchildren taking a shortcut down his private through street that leads to the duck ponds...if your strata doesn't want visitors, build a damn barbwire fence and put an armed guard on your gate like the rest do. Meanwhile, a still shot from Google doesn't help you case, because you can't tell when anybody works, it doesn't let you plan shit. And odds are, it doesn't show you much or anything of what they have inside. If it does, a casual walk down the street would show you that, no need for any "suspicious peering" as you call it. And far from being the most risky part of a burglary, taking a quick look around just isn't that hard. In a gated community, ya, anybody who doesn't belong must have hopped a fence to get in, and that's suspicious...but if not...well...I've lived on a cul-de-sac...have you, really? There are always cars turning in, realizing its the wrong turn, looping around, and leaving. Do you really write them all down just in case? And do you make quick sketches or photograph people who walk in on foot? I dunno, is the UK really that far gone into big brother? Do you really corner and grill people out walking their dogs? How dare they take a loop around your street, it's not theirs! GET OUT FOREIGNER!

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ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI

Ignorance abounds indeed by betterunixthanunix · 2010-04-23 00:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

The privacy concern is that Google is building a massive database of SSIDs -- this is not the same as your neighbors being able to see your SSID, this is a corporation with global reach.

This is the same sort of problem that we complain about when a company collects little bits of information that you leak in public, and builds a dossier on you. Yes, the information is technically public, but the fact that it is being assembled en masse is the problem. It is impossible to hide ever detail of your life from view, but when such a large database is built up, it reveals a lot about a person, potentially including things they did not want revealed.

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Palm trees and 8

Re:Ignorance abounds indeed by ahankinson · 2010-04-23 00:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but how would they map the SSID to you? All they know is that in this area, someone somewhere has a router with a SSID of "X." (And, if you're anything like my neighbours, half of those are named "linksys.")
Re:Ignorance abounds indeed by QuantumG · 2010-04-23 00:44 · Score: 3, Informative

The privacy concern is that privacy concerners are fucking idiots like you.
ITS IN PUBLIC. ANYTHING IN PUBLIC IS, wait for it, PUBLIC!!!!!!!!!
It doesn't matter if you collect just one little bit of public information or you collect every single piece of public information. It's public. You have no right to expect privacy IN PUBLIC.

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How we know is more important than what we know.
Re:Ignorance abounds indeed by LurkerXXX · 2010-04-23 00:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

Triangulating the position of a fixed broadcast point by a moving receiver (the Google van) is pretty trivial. My guess is there are some smart guys at Google that could make a way to do it in about 5 minutes if they want the data, which they appear to want.
Re:Ignorance abounds indeed by betterunixthanunix · 2010-04-23 01:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

As I noted elsewhere, it would not take much for Google to include a feature in Chrome that reported internal network details to Google services, which could then simply match those details to this database. Informed people would probably avoid Chrome, but most people are not "informed" about the technical workings of computer networks.

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Palm trees and 8
Re:Ignorance abounds indeed by GooberToo · 2010-04-23 01:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

This assumes they are continuously recording signal strength with GPS position. Perhaps they are, I dunno. Just the same, as someone up above already pointed out, if you have an Android phone and enable the Wireless Location provider, it can pinpoint your accuracy to within 35m or so, which likely indicates they don't continuously capture signal/location (or don't do the calculations to enhance the reported accuacy) and that its very roughly 2x the distance between the street and your location.
Of course, the first time you enable your GPS AND Wireless Location providers AND turn on your WIFI device on your phone, they now have enough information to very precisely associate your GPS location in relation to a number of wireless cell towers and all neighboring AP's. In other words, its very likely they absolutely understand which SSID is at which physical location. Of course, they also re-capture the MAC address/SSID as this is all reported back to Google.
And as a side note, many Android applications periodically turn your WIFI on, scan, turn back off, and report your location to third parties. Popular applications such as Locale and ShopSavvy both do this. And if you leave your WIFI device plus Wireless Location provider on, Google will use your phone as a war driving device whereby they periodically scan and return the results back to Google.

Origin of Privacy by redelm · 2010-04-23 00:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

Oh dear, I wish he hadn't said that. I hope he does too. Even quoted a bit out of context (it was possibly a flip tagline), when you direct activities at the biggest datalogger around and have capabilities that most people regard as extremely penetrating, you just do not say anything that might scare people. Bad for business.

Many people do not understand why privacy is a right. As he says "Why worry if you have nothing to hide?" It is not from nothing: One word answer: PREJUDICE. Privacy is basically a right of self defense against prejudice (and malice too, for that matter). We all have good reason to be concerned about the impression we make upon others since they can often make arbitrary decisions that affect our interests.

Of course others have a right to relevant information, but we have a right to control how much beyond we choose to present, and to whom. We do have a right to be treated as individuals. Not products of some correlation -- statistics is _descriptive_, not prescriptive.

Re:Origin of Privacy by farble1670 · 2010-04-23 02:53 · Score: 2, Informative

yeah he didn't say that actually. in a nutshell, he said that in the age of the patriot act where the government can access any electronic record, if you are doing something illegal, you had better not be doing it in the internet.

Re:Privacy by Goaway · 2010-04-23 00:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

It is also not at all the argument he was making. But it's much more fun to just believe everything we hear on the internet rather than look up what he actually said!

I use LINUX by mgkimsal2 · 2010-04-23 00:39 · Score: 5, Funny

so I guess only people unsavvy enough to use MACs will have their addresses recorded! Whew!

--
creation science book

Re:OK, I have something to hide... by Goaway · 2010-04-23 00:41 · Score: 2, Informative

OK, let me take the learned man's position

The learned man's position is to distrust what he is told by strangers, and check facts for himself.

You didn't do that.

I don't by JustOK · 2010-04-23 00:42 · Score: 5, Funny

I don't have a mac address. I use PCs.

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rewriting history since 2109

Schmidt is a Jackass! by SerpentMage · 2010-04-23 00:48 · Score: 4, Informative

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"

Re:Schmidt is a Jackass! by Anonymous Coward · 2010-04-23 02:03 · Score: 2, Informative

> Reaction from Google? CNET is barred one year from google.
You infer this from a single line towards the end of the article.
If you'd care to visit your link, you'll see that the line has been crossed out.

Really? by Mathinker · 2010-04-23 00:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

What they are doing is not even questionable, it is completely legal.

Do you know much about German law?

Because in the USA it IS questionable and in some cities it is ILLEGAL.

How do people use public wireless, then? They have to enter all the information manually, as opposed to scanning and just picking out the right SSID?

Could you post some of the case law / legal statutes involved? Thanks!

Re:Don't worry by mcgrew · 2010-04-23 00:56 · Score: 2, Funny

I think you're confusing Google with the DEA.

--
Free Martian Whores!

Very true here, but consider the place by RulerOf · 2010-04-23 01:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

What they are doing is not even questionable, it is completely legal.

That's true here in the US. Existence of companies like Skyhook and the iPod Touch's location feature make that evident. The question is if it's legal in Germany.

Not that it shouldn't be, particularly when an AP is metaphorically screaming,

Hello there, anyone who can hear me!
My name is Linksys!
You can tell me apart from other folks with the same name because I'm XX:YY:ZZ:AA:BB:CC!
If you like, I can give you an IPv4 address!
No, no, I haven't been told to exclude anyone who doesn't know my favorite word or phrase!
Please talk to me! I love you!

Here in the States, logging that you heard such a declaration rightly isn't against the law. Further, based on my very crude analogy, I also don't think that "unauthorized" connection/use of an unprotected/unconfigured AP should be a criminal offense either. Perhaps if someone learns that their pipe is being used against their knowledge, they could (and should) take civil action to force that person to pay for what he's been freeloading on, but I digress.

For someone who actually breaks in to an encrypted AP (and yes, WEP counts), consider that WEP might be like a retarded-midget bouncer who'll believe you if you lie to him, whereas WPA could be, "My name is Linksys ... Sorry about this, but unless you speak Italian and ol' Tony tells you what my favorite word or phrase is, I can't give you an IPv4 addres!" Any situation where network encryption is either bypassed or broken without the network owner's knowledge and permission is nefarious outright, regardless of intention, and that should most definitely be a criminal offense. Although if ol' Tony finds out before the cops do, you're probably even worse off.

--
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.

Re:Very true here, but consider the place by ElectricTurtle · 2010-04-23 01:15 · Score: 3, Informative

I would so mod you up if I could. In addition to companies like Skyhook, private hobbyist groups like Wigle have been doing this for years. Wigle is up to 20 million logged and geolocated APs. And if you download their client and play with the request constraints enough, you could retrieve every one of those entries with a little patience.

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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
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by WolfPup · 2010-04-23 01:36 · Score: 2, Informative

It does appear it can be done in Germany. Skyhook's coverage map shows plenty of of access points in Germany for their service. I would expect that they aren't all user submitted and more a result of the wardriving efforts to map certain areas. I don't know if they needed to do something special like registering with the government to allow this.

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-- Wolfpup
"A man whose circumstances went beyond his control." -- Styx
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by VGPowerlord · 2010-04-23 01:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

For someone who actually breaks in to an encrypted AP (and yes, WEP counts), consider that WEP might be like a retarded-midget bouncer who'll believe you if you lie to him, whereas WPA could be, "My name is Linksys ... Sorry about this, but unless you speak Italian and ol' Tony tells you what my favorite word or phrase is, I can't give you an IPv4 addres!" Any situation where network encryption is either bypassed or broken without the network owner's knowledge and permission is nefarious outright, regardless of intention, and that should most definitely be a criminal offense. Although if ol' Tony finds out before the cops do, you're probably even worse off.
The problem is that certain companies have muffed things for the rest of us.
For example, say a person wanted to play the latest WiFi-enabled DS games on their DSi, which supports WPA2.
Nintendo made an idiotic mistake for the DS by putting the WiFi configuration tool in each WiFi supported game, rather than in the system's settings. This DS version of this tool only supports WEP. Therefore, a DSi that plays DS Internet games must connect to a WEP wireless network. Whoops.

--
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by dominious · 2010-04-23 02:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

yes, but imagine Google was logging car plate numbers together with the address location they are parked and then published all that information on the web. Anyone could find where you live just by looking at your car plate numbers...Is this safe?

And yes, your car plate number and your home address are both public already, but at least they are not published on the Internets are they?
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by Sancho · 2010-04-23 03:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's true that this seems legal in the US. However there are lots of things which are legal because they seem harmless in the small scale, but which become privacy concerns on the large scale. The current laws don't deal with situations like this.
An example is police tailing. Police are allowed to follow someone without practically any oversight. This is self-limiting because it takes manpower, which is a highly limited resource. However courts have stated that surreptitiously monitoring someone's car with a GPS is equivalent to police tailing. This is something which requires considerably less manpower. Tailing with GPS is no longer self-limiting. If this were done on a large-scale, lots of people would consider it an invasion of privacy.
An entity listening to broadcasts in the 2.4Ghz range in a small area is probably not a problem. An entity with the ability to listen to these broadcasts across the entire US? That's something worth rethinking. Maybe it's a problem, and maybe it's not. I really don't know. But due to the scale, it's a slightly different situation.
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by TheRaven64 · 2010-04-23 03:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

No, you're missing the point. GMM (and, I think, Google Earth), uploads the MAC address of the access point, not of the local machine. It's been doing this for a couple of years, and it assumes that the first place that people search for from GMM is their current location. Google then uses this to build a database mapping access points to physical locations (and public IP addresses to access points). If you then run GMM while connected to an access point that other people have used this way, then it will automatically start in your currently location (or, at least, what Google's database thinks is your current location).

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by IamTheRealMike · 2010-04-23 04:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

yes, but imagine Google was logging car plate numbers together with the address location they are parked and then published all that information on the web
That's a pretty big leap from what is actually happening with these kinds of services. For one, it's possible to associate a person and their license plate without knowing where they live. But the only way you can associate a person with their SSID is going to their house, basically. And even then in a crowded apartment you'd probably be able to see several APs and have to ask which is the right one.
For another this data isn't "all published on the web". I don't know for sure but I bet if you tried to dump (eg) Skyhooks database by enumerating every possible SSID not only would it take you absolutely forever but they'd certainly block you at the server level.
Re:Very true here, but consider the place by shutdown+-p+now · 2010-04-23 04:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

yes, but imagine Google was logging car plate numbers together with the address location they are parked and then published all that information on the web.
A car plate number is linked to its owner's personal information. A MAC address or ESSID are not linked to anything.

And yes, your car plate number and your home address are both public already, but at least they are not published on the Internets are they?
The idea that adding "... on the Internet" to something fundamentally changes privacy issues is akin to a similarly silly idea that adding "... on a computer" to a patent somehow makes a new, patentable invention.

Pinpointing your location via this by Sabalon · 2010-04-23 01:08 · Score: 2, Funny

I can just see Google Maps now - "We have found you are near wifi access point Linksys. We have narrowed your location down to one of these 1,232,342 locations."

Re:Dear Google by Sir_Lewk · 2010-04-23 01:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

Wardriving is evil now? This is news to me...

It's not exactly like they are going to jump on your network and listen to all of your traffic. They're just recording your MAC address and your SID (which you chose to make publicly available) which you are blasting out into the world on the electromagnetic spectrum. Really this is no different than them driving past your house and recording what color you painted it.

--
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)

Re:Dear Google by Nerdfest · 2010-04-23 01:13 · Score: 2

Thanks, obviously it does need to be explined. I didn't realize there was already this distinction.

Ma Bell (the original) by gnieboer · 2010-04-23 01:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

In another ominous development, the phone company is planning to release a compiled document containing every name, address, and phone number of all their wired clients. The books will be published by region but be available globally. They'll be called by the disturbing name "White Pages".

They also will provide a charge-per-call service wherein on a request from not only government agencies but also private citizens, they will mining their data stores nationally in search of a particular individuals detailed info. While there is no clear consensus on this point, it appears this service will either be called 'Information' or mysteriously... just '411'.

They claim there will be an 'opt-out' option, but it will not be enabled by default, and there will be an extra charge for it's use.

Just some perspective to apply, not really meant as humor. This issue is about as dangerous as the phone book IMHO. You've got (or should have) an option in your router to hide your SSID. If you aren't using it, then you are BROADCASTING it. If someone tracking this information centrally really concerns you, change your SSID randomly every 30 days, and the MAC of your router. If your router doesn't support changing it's MAC, get a better one.
If it REALLY concerns you, don't use WiFi! There are much more nefarious things that can be done against WiFi than just logging an SSID/MAC that might actually be worth worrying about (again, IMHO).

Re:Ma Bell (the original) by TheRaven64 · 2010-04-23 02:47 · Score: 2, Informative

In another ominous development, the phone company is planning to release a compiled document containing every name, address, and phone number of all their wired clients
Really? Where I live, you are asked when you sign up for the phone service whether you want to be in the telephone directory, and you may (by law) opt out if you wish.

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I am TheRaven on Soylent News

Corporations have more rights than individuals by tekrat · 2010-04-23 01:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Therefore, I'm free to decrypt satellite TV and get HBO for free, right? After all, the signal is OUT THERE, so large corporations should fully expect me to decode it on my own and play it through my TV.

Why is it that corporations expect privacy, but citizens should not expect it?

--
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.

Easy fix by netsavior · 2010-04-23 01:49 · Score: 3, Funny

My friends and I all have a wifi router swap program. We each have 2 routers (WRT54G) and we keep one active until google wardrives them then we mail them off to the next person in the list. And he mails you one that google tagged as being elsewhere in the country.

if you are in front of my house, google will tell you that you are in Southern California (1500 miles away)

(no this post is not actually true)

"The Dark Side of Numbers" by MRe_nl · 2010-04-23 01:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

'In the Netherlands, the effort at establishing a comprehensive
population registration system for administrative and statistical
purposes was completed even before the Nazi-occupation (Methorst,
1936; Thomas, 1937). In 1938 H. W. Methorst, who was then the
director-general of the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics and
formerly also head of the Dutch office of population registration,
reported on the rapid progress being made in the Netherlands in
implementing a new comprehensive system of population registration
that would follow each person "from cradle to grave" and open "wide
perspectives for simplification of municipal administration and at the
same time social research" (1938: 713-714)... ... These registration systems and the related identity cards played
an important role in the apprehension of Dutch Jews and Gypsies prior
to their eventual deportation to the death camps. Dutch Jews had the
highest death rate (73 percent) of Jews residing in any occupied
western European country--far higher than the death rate among the
Jewish population of Belgium (40 percent) and France (25 percent), for
example."
source:
"The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in
Human Rights Abuses." Social Research, Summer, 2001, by William
Seltzer, Margo Anderson, hosted by findarticles.com:
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2267/2_68/77187772/p4/article.jhtml?term=

--
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"

Re:Terminology by natehoy · 2010-04-23 02:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

Except that you can hide your MAC address by simply turning off SSID broadcast, and your router is no longer screaming it.

TV content distributors use satellites to distribute content. If you use that, you must decrypt it. But you can sit and watch patterned static all day long, use the streamed signal to generate pseudorandom locations, and even point a focused receive-only antenna at the satellite and use the satellite as a point of reference if you want to.

The signals the device intentionally broadcasts in the clear are vastly different from signals that are sent as encrypted and you must decrypt. It's not the interception of the signal, that's perfectly legal. It's the circumvention of the encryption protocol.

You can call your SSID/MAC a "service", but in order to consider it a "protected service" you must encrypt it. Which means you'll have to invent your own 802.11x-ish spec that encrypts the MAC address and SSID as well as all data sent over the data channel. At that point, your analogy would hold. But you've got some serious development to do first.

Or you could simply uncheck the damned "broadcast SSID" checkbox on your router's configuration screen and be done with it. Google's not stupid enough to try and use AirSnort to ferret out hidden APs when there are plenty of broadcasting ones they could use for their Wifi-assisted-GPS service.

--
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."

Re:Privacy by Goaway · 2010-04-23 02:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now, if you read Schmidt's comment...

Which you clearly didn't actually do. You just believed what the internet told you that he said, without bothering to check for yourself.

Anology. by leuk_he · 2010-04-23 02:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is about privacy.

I think if i go and sit accross your house and put down the times you enter and leave the house and publish this on my blog (that is ad-sponsored) you would think different. If i make a note also if you locked your door (WEP or WPA2) then you would become a little more suspicious.

A special note is made

Then i keep this data for 10 year. Anyone who is interested can buy it or browse it.

But i have to stop now, google anology police is knocking on my door.

Is this illegal? That is where privacy starts and passwords stop.

Apple and the iPhone/iPod Touch already use this by Zenin · 2010-04-23 05:55 · Score: 2, Informative

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1975

"Location Services allows applications such as Maps, Camera, and Compass to use information from cellular, Wi-Fi1, and Global Positioning System (GPS)2 networks to determine your approximate location. This information is collected anonymously and in a form that does not personally identify you.

About location precision or accuracy

Depending on your device and available services, Location Services uses a combination of cellular, Wi-Fi, and GPS to determine your location. If you're not within a clear line of sight to GPS satellites, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS can determine your location using Wi-Fi3. If you're not in range of any Wi-Fi, iPhone can determine your location using cellular towers."

Do you know how they figure out your relative location via Wi-Fi? Yep...they've already got a map of transmitters in the wild to refer to, just like the map Google is building.

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My /. uid is better then your /. uid

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