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Google Audits Street View Data Systems
schliz writes "Google's plans to upgrade to high-definition Street View in Australia are on hold until it completes a rigorous internal audit of the processes, it announced today. The company is currently being investigated by international regulators about possible privacy breaches when it became known that its Street View vehicles were capturing not only publicly available SSIDs and MAC addresses, but also samples of payload data transmitted over these networks."
Yes, people should definitely secure their communications.
That said, just because someone leaves their door open, doesn't mean Google should waltz right in.
Sent from your iPad.
Compared to Google, BP is the mom and pop grocery on the corner.
In what world do you live in? BP is a $246 billion dollar global energy company. In comparison, Google is a dinky little $24 billion dollar company. Not to mention how BP has 4.5 times as many employees. One can go on and on about how your characterization is plainly wrong.
They didn't offer it up, they got caught in Germany. It's spin that they are being the 'good guy' and offering it up in other countries. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8684110.stm And also, as a company that data would be deemed a record and needs to be treated in compliance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_management
This entire wireless thing is total BS. From what I have read, they were using kismet for their wireless collection program. and if they were channel hopping like any good war-driver I assure you they were not around long enough to get anything useful. (DNS,netbios,MDNS packets etc) All of it was open to begin with and all ready up for grabs. most people know what they are buying now when they get an AP that is not setup properly (Big warning stickers printed on box for setup).
We don't know what prompted them to disclose the collection in the first place. Corporations have been "coming clean" on things that were on the verge of being exposed _forever_, there is nothing to suggest that such a thing did not happen here. They "failed to do the right thing" in collecting the information in the first place. Even if we take it to be an "accident" there still must have been employees who were aware of what was happening and chose to not act sooner. I don't know if you realize, they collected a pretty substantial amount of data in a pretty systematic way.
Last I heard the oil spill was about to hit the Atlantic ocean currents. (of course I may be wrong)
The PR disaster could have very well been inevitable. Even if we take the story that they provided as true, that it was an accident, it is still likely that the truth would come out eventually in which case it would look far far worse than it does now. It's always better to come clean in those cases, particularly if discovery appears inevitable (believe me, lots of large corporations sweep all kinds of things under the rug, as long as they know for a fact that they stand little to no chance of being discovered). So, accepting that disclosure would be necessary at some point, given the magnitude of the apparent violation, the likely hood of public backlash, and the increasing pressure for government oversight/regulation of data collection/retention by private companies: yeah, do an internal audit ASAP.
As of this writing, BP's market cap is $129.89B, while google's is $149.69B. Even before the current mess, BP's stock was about 50% higher, which would have given it a market cap of about $195B; more than google, but still in the same league.
Links (will probably have different values by the time you view):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=bp
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog
I think the comparison is unfair for other reasons, as I mentioned, but relative company size is not one of them.
The Gulf is actually quite small compared to the Earth
That's like saying you're town is quite small compared to the rest of the Earth. No harm in nuking it. The subjectivity of the word large is not important in the scheme of this conversation. This oil leak is not a natural occurrence. History does not change this fact.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.