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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."

5 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 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"?

  2. 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. 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".