Slashdot Mirror
Google Relents, Will Hand Over European Wi-Fi Data
itwbennett writes "Having previously denied demands from Germany that the company turn over hard drives with data it secretly collected from open wireless networks over the past three years, Google has reversed course. A Google representative said that it will hand over the data to German, French, and Spanish authorities within a matter of days, according to the Financial Times, which first reported this latest development on Wednesday. 'We screwed up. Let's be very clear about that,' Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the newspaper."
"They want to have never captured it in the first place" would have seen Google 'see their' error on day one and call it a beta test with safeguards for the real global collection.
Google knew it was wrong in Germany as it started, but thought they could get away with it due to other collection attempts.
Google spun up the German legal system for a long term cash win and looks like they will have the data seen by outsiders.
Tech law was fluid in most parts of the world, but law makers did seem to realise you dont get to play man in the middle and keep any data.
No matter what others might have done, the encryption not used, the profit projections or the global long term "error".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It was definitely useful to someone in google, you don't collect this stuff by accident. Not only that but if you can't understand how this is an utter gold mine for various governments around the world, then you need to soak up a few more conspiracy theories coupled with information published by groups like the Federation of American Scientists (fas.org) - that'll gain you a tremendous amount of insight in to the actual real life inner workings of various secret 3 letter agencies. Former 3 letter agency drone myself, so I speak from experience.
Traffic analysis, it's all part of the bigger picture. Less than a second can still yield interesting results. MAC addresses tied to latitude and longitude, secret rooms in major ISP's that have access to whatever they need, enough information that they can accurately deduce who you are and where you are, but even more scary, who you talk to, who they talk to, and on and on for as many layers as the data storage medium can log. This is, effectively, the same type of thing that facebook does. Facebook obviously figured out a commercial use for it. Governments have been doing the same thing for as long as they've existed.
Intelligence agencies already work with telcos and Bells from inception. Its part of getting your telco approval.
Germany has laws, as do other parts of the world saying you cannot break into other peoples networks (encrypted or not) and keep the data (small or large amounts).
The origin of the laws might have been data protection ie hackers or other from private firms or public/private partnerships.
Google knew this but still went ahead with wide area wifi collection.
Google could have lobbied hard for an exemption or law change re education, nation building, disability support, tourism or any buzz issue with PR tech bite.
Requested to build a better iworld, this is what we are doing, your evil luddite state/federal regulator said "No"
But Google just tried to slip under the legal protection of "they did it too".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"