Slashdot Mirror
Germany Demands Google Forfeit Citizens' Wi-Fi Data
eldavojohn writes "Germany has ordered Google to give up hard disk drives used to store German data collected during their Street View operations in that country. This follows Google's admission last week (after prodding from the Germans) that it had collected the data from unsecured wireless area networks from around the entire world as its roving cars collected the photo archive for Street View. Google says they've offered to just destroy the data, in cooperation with national regulators, but the German government wants to know what they've collected. They do not think that destroying the drives suffices for compliance with the laws. Officials went so far as to say of the situation, 'It is not acceptable that a company operating in the EU does not respect EU rules.' Germany has certainly been keeping their eye on the search giant." The Ars coverage notes that the US FTC may be looking more closely at Google's collection as well.
I seriously hope more EU countries will demand the same thing. It's outrageous
how Google blatantly breaks laws, especially privacy ones, and get nothing for it.
Whoever in the EU parliament will impose big fines for Google breaking privacy laws gets my vote. It seems it's the only way Google will learn. They have previously too pissed of Germany on privacy issues.
US may not do the same, but Europeans take privacy seriously. We have had our governments to completely different agendas many times in the history. It also doesn't help one thing that Google is an US company and US government can get access to all of our data even while those people aren't US citizens. Don't use Google services you say? That's a little bit hard when they have their cars driving around sniffing web traffic.
Viviane Reding, the European justice commissioner, criticized Google for not cooperating with German privacy officials.
"It is not acceptable that a company operating in the E.U. does not respect E.U. rules," she said in a statement released by her office.
This is what Google should learn.
Google [has] until May 26 to hand over one of the hard drives that it had used to collect and store information in Germany, where Street View is not yet available.
Through a spokesman, Google reiterated its offer to destroy the WLAN data in conjunction with regulators, but stopped short of saying it would hand over a hard drive, which would allow regulators to see for the first time what kind of data had been collected.
So they're happy to "destroy" is but don't want to turn it over so Germany can see exactly what they were gathering? Smells fishy to me.
1. If you run an unencrypted 802.11 network, expect your data to get pwned.
2. It was an accident of code reuse (seriously, guys, code-reuse accidents happen quite often).
3. If people were just casually using the internet, https saved their stupid little asses from letting their data out in the wild.
4. Why do we trust the German government (or any EU government, for that matter) with this data more than we trust Google? I know that the EU is better about not giving companies a blank check, but let's not forget about the kind of crap that governments pull. This is a surveillance freebie, provided that the illicit persons being surveilled are professional idiots (i.e. had an open network).
Google screwed up, but has the Google-hatred here risen to such a high degree that we're okay with just handing over even accidentally-collected data to the government? I'd at least insist on an independent auditor, to make sure that government abuses of the data didn't take place. With Google's resources, I'd go so far as to take it to the (largely impotent) EU court of human rights.
Google collected broadcast data by accident, but as yet has not violated my privacy.
So the German government wants Google to violate my privacy by giving my data to the German government.
Which is (as many have pointed out) exactly who i want to be protected from when I decide to consider my data private.
Germany needs to be sat down in the back of the EU with a tall, cone-shaped hat on its head. Again.
But that's not what has happened *at all*. From the article of the slashdot story this story links to:
They're basically saying "let's just forget anything happened" by offering to delete the data. Uh-nuh, not really how it works. If they didn't pay attention and ran software that violated privacy laws, they should be punished. THEN we can delete the data...
What are you talking about? What "persecution"? If they violated laws, they get punished. Where's the problem? I'd rather have corporations involuntarily investigated, than then "admitting their wrongdoings" and there being no consequences for it.
Google's already freely stipulated that they did something wrong. If they're willing to admit that they broke the law and collected this data, then why would the German government still need this data?
Oh, that's right, only because it's a treasure-trove of never-needed-a-warrant-in-the-first-place data.
An independent auditor is the nearest thing we'll get to fair inspection of this, but they'll just hand that crap over to the government, anyway. Let's face it:
1. This data is most probably completely useless junk.
2. On the off chance that there are little nuggets of valuable information in this data-set, the only way to safeguard the individuals who had their data recorded is to delete every copy of it.
The EU's prevailing belief, that businesses tend towards malfeasance and must be held in check by the government, is a valid one. The founding American belief, that governments tend towards malfeasance and must be held in check by the people, is also valid. Google's trepidation certainly seems more populist than corporatist in this case.
how does giving the wifi data to a government solve anything.
That was my first thought, too. First of all, handing it over doesn't guarantee that you haven't made a copy of it. And distributing either an original or a copy doesn't guarantee any security, even if it is the German government.
Besides, there's the obligatory troll, you know who *else* was a German government? Someone's gonna go there...
I can see the fnords!
> It's sad that Google is getting punished for "doing the right thing" and being honest about their screw-up.
This comment reminds me of the movie "The Quiz Show", when Van Doren confesses his role in the rigging of the game during a House Committee meeting. At first some people congratulates him for coming forward, but then the chairman says: there is no merit in telling the simple truth. Then everybody applauses.
lucm, indeed.
No wonder we don't see too many posters from the EU, what with their inability to access slashdot.org's network without prior authorization.