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."

Comments

this is gonna be interesting

[Tom]

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.

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.

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[shentino]

Simple.

We trust Google more than we do BP.

Personally, I think for a good reason too.

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[Lunix Nutcase]

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.

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[LordLimecat]

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?

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[Ephemeriis]

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).

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[Morty]

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.

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[Kaboom13]

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.

Re:this is gonna be interesting

[Lunix Nutcase]

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.

Privacy breeches? Sign me up!

[kyz]

I'm also interested in privacy galoshes, privacy longjohns and privacy jodhpurs

"Publicly Available"

[dward90]

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?

Re:"Publicly Available"

[cbiltcliffe]

Google didn't just "waltz right in."

They collected it by accident, and when they realized they had it, they publicly stated that they had the information, and were purging it.

They didn't need to say anything, because nobody knew they had it until they announced it. But in the spirit of openness, they stated what had happened, how it had happened, and their proposed remedy for the situation.

The fact that various regulators are getting pissy about it isn't their fault.

Re:"Publicly Available"

[papasui]

**Cough**Bullshit**Cough** There's plenty of wifi scanners available that only collect SSID and mac addresses. They don't necessarily sniff the data and record it. Google or the company they contract made a decision to gather this data, the only accident was getting caught.

Re:"Publicly Available"

[HungryHobo]

and if someone publishes a web page you shouldn't be able to just waltz right in and view whatever's on it!

If someone watches you walk around naked while you're in the bathroom that's a violation of your privacy.
If someone watches you walk around naked in the middle of the street then they have done nothing to violate your privacy.

people shouldn't be required to secure their communications *effectively* but some kind of symbolic security should be required to expect any kind of privacy.

Re:"Publicly Available"

[ATestR]

Look at it another way. If there was a company - call it "Gaggle" - that drove up and down the streets and roads of the world making sound recordings to present a "Street Sounds" feature to their new mapping program. Would there be such a fuss if they recorded the voices of two people shouting across the street at each other? Its about the same thing.

Re:"Publicly Available"

[Miros]

The people shouting *know* that other people can hear them.

Re:"Publicly Available"

[papasui]

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

Re:"Publicly Available"

[nedlohs]

So you know their claim that they reused some software from another google project without noticing it recorded more than what they actually cared about is false?

And you know that the programmer who did so either didn't realize at all or didn't just think "who cares if it wastes resources grabbing that stuff it's minuscule and we can just not use it" and just used it without mentioning it to anyone?

Are you omniscient? Or do you just spend your life spying on google?

Stumble This!

[Anonymous Coward]

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).