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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."
I'm also interested in privacy galoshes, privacy longjohns and privacy jodhpurs
Does my bum look big in this?
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.
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.
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?
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).
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
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.