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Google Relents, Will Hand Over European Wi-Fi Data

Posted by timothy on from the at-least-we-know-the-govts-won't-abuse-it dept.

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."

13 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Great by lennier1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're opening up a whole warehouse full of cans of worms by handing the data over to a government with plenty of agendas instead of destroying it.

    1. Re:Great by Third+Position · · Score: 4, Insightful

      True. But they opened the first can of worms by collecting it in the first place.

      --
      American Third Position
      Finally, a real choice!
    2. Re:Great by Cyberllama · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is not useful information even for Google. Their software was constantly switching frequencies so we're talking about less than a seconds worth of packets for any given network.

      What are they gonna do with that?

      "Well, Ted, based off this TCP_ACK I'm seeing here, I think we can safely conclude that this Fred Morgan of 123 Anystreet is gay. Wouldn't you agree?"

      "Sure is Bob, that's the queerest TCP_ACK I've ever seen."

      They don't want this crap. They can't monetize that. They *want* to delete it. They want to have never captured it in the first place, but sadly that ship has sailed. If they delete it, they'll be charged with destroying evidence or whatever the equivalent crime is in the various European jurisdictions in question. One dumb careless mistake has grown a life of it's own.

    3. Re:Great by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Only for those of you who apply all your thoughts on privacy entirely inconsistently.

      Few months ago on slashdot someone published a list of every wifi hotspot on their train line. Where was the uproar then? Cops want to reserve the right no to be photographed in public, and people complain (rightfully so) that what they do in public should be recordable with no recourse. Now google drives a car down the streets and collects your publicly visible information (SSID) and you complain again that they should not be collecting private data?

      How come every ideal on slashdot is applied so haphazardly? Make a choice people. Should something that anyone can see from your street be private, or public?

      As a side note, how many people complaining about Google's collection of wireless information actually bothered to uncheck that little box that says "Broadcast SSID"?

    4. Re:Great by yyxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not in Germany.

      Yes, even in Germany taking street photographs and collecting packet radio data was legal in the past.

      Whether recording unencrypted WLAN packets is or is not legal today has been a legally gray area. It depends on whether one considers such data "private" or not. That question is now being settled in a wave of anti-Google and anti-American hysteria.

      What purpose is being served by this is unclear. If you run an unprotected WLAN in Germany, you are probably running afoul of both data protection and copyright laws already.

      Google is large enough to be able to get legal advice for other countries before running a massive data collection operation there.

      They did. The data they actually intended to collect conforms with German law. They spent months talking to German data protection czars about that.

      They simply screwed up and unintentionally collected additional data, and for that they are being crucified.

      The whole uproar has nothing to do with privacy or data protection, it's simple hysteria and political and corporate opportunism. Actual German data protection is atrocious.

  2. Meta Screwup? by Psaakyrn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ok, so which is the screwup, not giving the data, or the giving up of data?

    1. Re:Meta Screwup? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The big screwup is getting caught at collecting it.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  3. Google screwed up... by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...so now people's personal data is now in the hands of the relevant governments. I'm not sure this helps the situation.

  4. at the end of the day... by powerspike · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really i don't see a problem with what google did, apparently it was only open networks etc, having an open wireless device in your house would be like not having curtains on your windows, if your not going to "stop" people from looking in, you've got nothing to complain about. If they were only taking samples, there shouldn't be much of an issue, because you where broadcasting the data to the public anyway...

    1. Re:at the end of the day... by yyxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wardriving is something people did (and do?) for the fun of it, it's not major corporations doing it on a massive scale to collect data on people,

      But other corporations have done this as well.

      it's illegal too btw in some countries.

      It shouldn't be. If you broadcast unencrypted packet, people shouldn't be thrown in jail for receiving them.

  5. Why is this still in the news? by rm999 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People kept their networks open, Google gathered some probably useless information about them - presumably no more than 15 seconds worth in most cases (because it's a car driving by). Google has far more information on far more people from saved web searches/e-mails/etc. I'm tired of seeing these stories, I really don't care.

    If European Governments are actually pursuing this, shame on them.

  6. Re:Whatever for? by yyxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny, by the way, how Google wondered about the legality of having its data inspected by the data protection authority.

    Nothing "funny" about it; they probably have good lawyers, lawyers who advised them that handing over the data to the "data protection authority" without a court order may itself constitute a violation of German privacy laws.

    Usually that would mean sending someone to have a look and see and perhaps sample the data.

    Or it might mean that the "data protection authority" goes on a massive data mining quest to identify file sharers, pornographers, and anybody who runs an open WLAN, and then charges all of those people with breaking the law. They couldn't drive around collecting that data themselves, but they can obtain it from Google. Probably it doesn't mean that in this specific case, but it sets a bad precedent.

    Think about it: if you were a government intent on violating people's privacy, what would be the best place to do it? That's right: the "data protection authority", armed with a legal right to request and inspect anybody's data without a court order, just to look for more "data protection violations".

  7. Re:RTFA by sahonen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How exactly is data which is transmitted to the public airwaves by you any different than an SSID which is transmitted into the public airwaves by a router? If you transmit information unencrypted in an extremely widely known modulation scheme, where exactly is the expectation of privacy in doing so? It's like complaining that someone wrote down something you yelled in the middle of Times Square.

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