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Google's Streetview Privacy Snafu Prompts Lawsuit
shmG writes "Google's secret data collection has prompted a class-action lawsuit that could force the company to pay up to $10,000 for each time it recorded data from unprotected hotspots, court documents show. The incident, which the company claims to have been unintentional, has prompted the ire of governments and privacy groups around the world. Google collected information that could be used to identify users, including 'the user's unique or chosen Wi-Fi network name, the unique number given to the user's hardware ... [and] data consisting of all or part of any documents, e-mails, video, audio, and VoIP information being sent over the network by the user,' the suit stated."
Vicki Van Valin ... said that their homes' wireless networks were infact not password protected... In connection with her work and home life, Van Valin transmits and receives a substantial amount of data from and to her computer over her wireless network. A significant amount of the wireless data is also subject to her employer's non-disclosure and security regulations
WTF. Her security was certainly broken, but not by Google - she broke it herself. She should be fired for not using encryption. I know it's wrong to wish ill upon somebody, but in this case, the security of her employer's data is more important than her job. If she does this kind of stupid stuff, she should get a job not involved with confidential data.
The pair also claimed to have sent credit card and banking data over their networks.
If you send your credit card info and bank info over unencrypted HTTP, you have bigger problems to worry about than Google.
If somebody steals your car, they've committed a crime against your property. That's pretty much covered in the laws of any country.
If somebody looks at you, they've intercepted photons which you discarded by reflecting them. If someone takes a photo of you in public, they've recorded photons which you sent out into public space. Recording unencrypted wifi frames is much closer to the final analogy than the first.
This'll send Google a clear message -- honesty doesn't pay off. If you fuck up and overstep your bounds, for crissakes do NOT let anyone know you did it.
Just one of these stupid posts should be allowed per Google-SSID article. All the other ones are redundant.
Ok, why is this stupid? Because the entire world has grown up to understand the idea that there is a difference between doing something and doing something a lot.
There is a difference between peeking in a magazine and reading it at the store.
There is a difference between listening to music and listening to music at 100dbls in a party.
There is a difference between walking around naked in your house and doing so in your glass house.
There is a difference between selling your old computer in your garage and turning your garage into a used hardware store.
There is a difference between selling your 2 tickets to a concert you won't attend and selling your 100 tickets to the same concert.
In fact the whole RIAA has successfully sold (or rather bought) the idea that it is not the same to share a movie with your friend than sharing it with your other hundred thousand friends.
And yet you are unable to understand that there is a difference between broadcasting SSID and MAC addresses to let your equipment interoperate inside your home and volunteering them to a global geolocating database of the entire Internet!
And yet you are unable to understand that there is a difference to let your neighbors see your face and having an omnipresent and omniscient entity mapping and logging every detail about you!
These people didn't opt-in into this, they never even knew about it, and if they knew, they would have opted out.
Google is abusing both people's thrust in their neighborhood --who could have known that Google is watching you everywhere?-- and their ignorance. Is it ok to take something from someone just because they didn't knew they had it?
Google basically played "easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission". Are you really so incapable to realize the difference between an individual and a corporation?
But... the future refused to change.