Germany Finds Kismet, Custom Code In Google Car

theodp writes "While waiting for a hard disk of Wi-Fi data that Google says its Street View cars gathered by mistake, the Hamburg Information Commissioner's office performed tests on a Google Street View car in a controlled environment with simulated wireless networks and issued the following statement: 'For the Wi-Fi coverage in the Street View cars, both the free software Kismet, and a Google-specific program were used. The Google-specific program components are available only in machine-readable binary code, which makes it impossible to analyze the internal processing.' Interestingly, a 2008 academic paper — Drive-by Localization of Roadside WiFi Networks (PDF) — describes a similar setup, and its authors discuss how they 'modified Kismet, a popular wireless packet sniffer, to optionally capture all packets received on the raw virtual interface.' Computerworld reports that lawyers in a class-action suit have amended their complaint to link a Google patent app to Street View data sniffing."

Comments

Re:So how can the computer do it then?

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

So does this make them the 1st or the 10nd type of person?

Re:So how can the computer do it then?

[Dunbal]

zero-one, please.... all you little endian people who count the wrong way around...

Re:There are worse intercepts besides a few wifi p

[Hatta]

Yeah seriously. Why does the German government have to be such a bunch of Naz... oh, I see.

Re:So how can the computer do it then?

[Monkeedude1212]

That is so 1.

Now we can find out once and for all ...

[tomhudson]

They're not being evil now, are they?

It depends - the government should disassemble the code and see if the evil bit is set.

Kismet

[Itninja]

I guess it was just destiny for this to happen.

Re:So how can the computer do it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

way to kill the joke, now go and encode 132 on your hands. it's 00100 00100 in binary.

Re:So how can the computer do it then?

[shutdown -p now]

Do you write the current year as 0102?

I prefer 0x0A14.

Re:So how can the computer do it then?

[SQLGuru]

If you're going to be anal, at least know what the F you're talking about.

What does 15 have to do with it?

Re:Not really illegal, but wreaks of dishonesty

[ElectricTurtle]

If I were a woman who had been jizzed on by the Commander in Chief, I might have kept the dress too.