Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Audits Street View Data Systems

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the we-meant-to-do-that dept.

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."

4 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Re:this is gonna be interesting by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:"Publicly Available" by papasui · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  3. Stumble This! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

  4. Re:this is gonna be interesting by Morty · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.