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Google Street View Wi-Fi Data Includes Passwords, Email Content
snydeq writes "The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty has found passwords and email messages among the Street View Wi-Fi data Google intercepted, InfoWorld reports. The data protection authority has been investigating Google's recording of traffic carried over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google has said it collected only 'fragments' of personal web traffic as it passed by because its Wi-Fi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second. With Wi-Fi networks operating at up to 54Mbps, however, those 'fragments' may have been more than that. 'We can already state that [...] Google did indeed record email access passwords [and] extracts of the content of email messages,' CNIL said."
I will be passing this to the my associates in law enforcement and we will stop and arrest any people operating vehicles within this State for violations of our communications laws. It is one thing to take pictures from a public street(which is problematic in and of itself around here, for Google), but it is another to intercept or otherwise illegally obtain data that you do not have legal authority to possess.
We might seem like backwards people to most, in the rest of the U.S. and the World, but we do not stand back while anyone violates our laws. Google has just started a very big problem for themselves. If Google attempts to destroy the information they illegally obtained, then they will be charged for the destruction of evidence, in addition to all of the other charges.
It seriously sucks to be a driver of one of those cars right now.
I understand where you're coming from, but the simple fact is that if this is your argument, you are a pathetic fucking nerd. People don't walk around with devices and software that let them do what you're saying if they're ever going to get laid.
Whale