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:Something I've had a hard time understading...

[0100010001010011]

Google location API. Doesn't matter if the network is secure or not.

"Hey I found AA:BB:CC:DD:EE at this location"

Person with iPod Touch or other device with wireless only sends to google: "Hey I see access points AA:BB:CC:DD:EE, AA:BB:CC:DD:FF and AA:BB:CC:DD:00" Google goes: "Yea, you're around here".

Go to google maps with a new version of Firefox or Chrome. Click on the button that just has a circle in it. It'll ask for permission to send your location and should show you where you are on the map.

Re:Is this how they can do wifi location detection

[Hurricane78]

A company named Skyhook Wireless is doing this. They are continuously driving trough whole continents with cars, mapping out wifi routers/stations/etc.
They are what gives the iPhones/iPods their navigation (they have to real GPS). They are behind Maps Booster which plugs right into the Symbian (Nokia & others) geolocation APIs. (I bought it for 3€, and while it is less exact than GPS here, it also works inside buildings. Plus it makes first-time GPS satellite locking much faster.)

I wonder how this is different from what Google does, though.

But I don’t have a problem with SSID logging anyway. I mean, people who rely on SSIDs for security, really are idiots anyway. It’s not worse than knowing an IP. I can’t see where privacy could be a concern here. And I’m extremely strict about my privacy rules.
I think it’s a good service. Hell, how could I not think that paying 3€ for someone to drive across every street on the continent is a good deal?

P.S.: No, I’m not affiliated. And I repeat: It’s not very exact here. I am lucky if I get 50m accuracy. While my A-GPS can get down to 3m. (Oh, and if anyone of you know a service that requires no further hardware, and can get down below 50 cm [ideally below 10cm], please contact me! :)