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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."
While I'm not an expert on security or privacy, it seems to me like "publicly available" should mean that they didn't gather any data that citizens weren't openly broadcasting anyway. From an ethical perspective, it's shaky at best, but it's probably a huge difference legally.
I'm not endorsing Google's collection, but aren't people who openly broadcast their data be at least *a little* at fault here?
My other sig is clever.
Simple.
We trust Google more than we do BP.
Personally, I think for a good reason too.
I was wondering about privacy trousers myself.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
>>>Google's data gathering isn't destroying the Earth.
Neither will an oil spill destroy the Earth. In fact about the only thing that would destroy the earth is the sun going supersized, or a black hole skimming by & tearing the planet apart. The earth is hard to destroy..... even when an asteroid hit the planet, the earth continued merrily on and life recovered. Nothing mankind could do would destroy the earth.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I like how both your comment AND TFS imply that Google got "caught" doing something. You DO realize that they openly disclosed (without coercion or prompting) this whole wireless mess, right? How is disclosing a mistake to those affected, and then working towards a resolution "failing to do the right thing"? What steps would you propose they take?
Large? The Gulf is actually quite small compared to the Earth. For example the animals living along Maine's coast have no clue there's an oil spill happening. Also let's not forget that prior to 1800, it was common for the Earth to "belch" oil all over the place, creating giant pools of oil both on land and in the ocean. On his journey to Philadelphia as first president, Washington had to detour around several tarpits (oil) to get there.
That was the natural state of the world, until man came along and cleaned it up. It helps if you study history instead of hyperbole.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'm really looking forward to the comments. When BP lets the oil spill continue day after day, the /. crowd goes asking why we let them handle it at all, after all they're the ones responsible for the mess.
The whole BP thing is simply a giant WTF.
I have a genuinely hard time wrapping my head around the fact that they're drilling in water this deep with absolutely no ability to deal with problems like this. They aren't just scrambling to deploy a fix, they're scrambling to come up with a fix.
It doesn't seem like BP should be willing to do something that risky without a disaster plan.
It doesn't seem like the Government should give them the go-ahead to do something that risky without a disaster plan.
It doesn't seem like stockholders should allow them to do something that risky without a disaster plan.
And yet, here we are.
Now Google has a mess, and is doing an internal audit. I'm curious if we will apply the same reasoning, or a different standard. And what justifications we'll see for it.
Google's mess isn't going to kill any wildlife or pollute any waterways. It's very unlikely to result in anybody losing their livelihood. They're also conducting the audit before going ahead, rather than after something has gone horribly wrong (at least with the HD thing in Australia).
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
BP's oil spill has far greater scope and urgency:
* The oil spill is a regional environmental catastrophe. It has scope well outside of BP or even the oil industry as a whole -- it's impacting marshlands, seafood industry, tourism, and other industries. So far, this privacy issue seems to only be present within google.
* The oil spill is an emergency. We normally give companies a chance to "make it right". In the case of the oil spill, any unnecessary delay means definite short-term damage/impact to the environment, the seafood industry, and tourism, and possible long-term damage. We don't have time to take a wait-and-see attitude.
Normal legal processes have taken years to "fix" problems. That's fine for improperly gathering private data; not fine for an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
Google's data mining is annoying at best, BP's oil spill is an environmental disaster that will harm millions of people (not to mention wildlife) in ways we can't even begin to calculate yet. Applying the same standard is stupid, because it implies the scale of the problem is in anyway similar. Furthermore, while it is fairly understandable to make mistakes in software systems that will at worst collect data about unencrypted wifi traffic, it is not understandable to make mistakes in a critical safety device that lives and the economic and environmental prosperity of an entire coastline depend on.
Google is in the wrong, and so is BP. But to pretend that the seriousness of the way they are wrong is in the same ballpark is ridiculous, and therefore the expect the same reaction is ridiculous. If you do an employee background check, and one of your employees was fined for littering, the other convicted of theft, manslaughter, criminal negligence, bribing public officials, and destruction of property, you would react in different ways. Thats the difference in severity we are talking about.
Market cap is not synonymous with the size of a company. BP has 10x the yearly revenue and 4.5x as many employees as Google. It is the far larger company.
You make a good point. It is important to consider that Google's motives may not be altruistic. Furthermore, you're right that in the past companies "come clean" only after it becomes clear that they have no choice.
However, I don't think it is fair to presume the guilt of Google simply because of the actions of other companies. There is no proof of anything here other than what is publicly known about the situation. In admitting we don't know what prompted the disclosure you must also admit finger pointing is baseless until we learn more about what happened. The systematic method of data collection doesn't even speak to guilt. Any sufficiently large and complex system could be difficult to audit especially on a global scale.
I think it is fair to say that it is at least possible that there were no evil intentions on Google's part. There is just as much evidence for this as any other conclusion at this point.
I'd rather see Google's corporate license revoked. Let them operate as a proprietorship whose owner(s) have full liability for his company's actions
You are seriously arguing that a single person should be responsible for the actions of twenty thousand other people?
REALLY?