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Why Google's Wi-Fi Payload Collection Was Inadvertent
Reader Lauren Weinstein found a blog post that gives a good, fairly technical explanation of why Google's collection of Wi-Fi payload data was incidental, and why it's easy to collect Wi-Fi payload data accidentally in the course of mapping Wi-Fi access points. "Although some people are suspicious of their explanation, Google is almost certainly telling the truth when it claims it was an accident. The technology for Wi-Fi scanning means it's easy to inadvertently capture too much information, and be unaware of it. ... It's really easy to protect your data: simply turn on WPA. This completely stops Google (or anybody else) from spying on your private data. ... Laws against this won't stop the bad guys (hackers). They will only unfairly punish good guys (like Google) whenever they make a mistake. ... [A]nybody who has experience in Wi-Fi mapping would believe Google. Data packets help Google find more access-points and triangulate them, yet the payload of the packets do nothing useful for Google because they are only fragments."
The argument is that capturing data packets is useful to find the SSID of access points which send beacon frames with blank SSID field or where only a client is within range but not the access point itself. That argument is bogus. The mobile devices which will later use the mapped SSIDs and BSSIDs to calculate their own position do not see anything but the beacon frames. It is therefore entirely sufficient to capture just the beacon frames.
There is a legitimate argument that Google was just lazy (or "scientific") by capturing everything they can get in the field and analyzing later. There is however no technical reason for this and we should not make one up to defend Google.
Despite what everyone thinks (and how it seems to the uninformed) it very likely was accidental. If I was tasked to correlate Access Points to their locations, the simplest way would be to dump raw wireless traffic to one file, and raw GPS data to another. Later, you can zip them both up and run some analysis, and get the data you want out.
It'd be real easy to forget to filter the packets you dump to only anonymous, non-data-carrying packets. More than likely the people who designed it just forgot to, or figured it would be no big deal if they just never used that info. Sloppy engineering maybe, but certainly not malicious.
Yes, they should have only saved the SSID, location, and signal strength. Instead, they used off the shelf software which saved more data. There is no reason to believe this was intentional.
That's fine and legal to do in the USA, as you have no expectation of privacy using unencrypted broadcast:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002511----000-.html
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 119 > 2511
(g) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person—
(i) to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public;
(v) for other users of the same frequency to intercept any radio communication made through a system that utilizes frequencies monitored by individuals engaged in the provision or the use of such system, if such communication is not scrambled or encrypted.
In the US, if you transmit in the clear on unlicensed spectrum, they can legally pick it up due to two different, non-overlapping legal clauses. ( Note, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, this is but one of possibly relevant laws, etc.)
The problem is they didn't need to do so, and it creeps people in the US out. So even here where it is legal, they probably shouldn't have from a PR point of view.
In some other countries it is not legal to collect that data, and doing so intentionally might lower your penalties, but still does not make it legal.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
So you say a law making it illegal to capture, store and distribute personal data is bogus? Because that is the German version of the law you just attacked. You know, that law also makes it illegal to scrape websites and build a database of mail-addresses to spam. It makes it illegal for merchants to collect data from their customers and sell it behind their back. It makes it illegal to combine data from multiple sources to create a profile. It even is forcing some of the data collection companies to open their data and gives everybody the right to see, what they have collected (those companies have an exception and create something similar to the US credit scores), something they wouldn't have to do otherwise. The law makes sense because it doesn't try to narrowly define for each case what is allowed and what not, instead it defined some simple principles and tries to protect the privacy of citizens.
And how did the government knew about it in the first place?
They didn't. German governments demanded to audit the data Google cars collected before this was known. And then Google came out with this 'additional info'.
This was covered many places, this is one: http://lastwatchdog.com/googles-wifi-data-harvest-draws-widening-probes/
In April, Google admitted to German privacy regulators that vehicles specially-equipped to systematically shoot photos of street scenes for Google Maps also carried gear to collect data moving across unencrypted wireless networks situated inside homes and businesses. The company insisted at the time that only basic Wi-Fi location data was being collected. But after Germany requested an audit, Google subsequently disclosed that it had mistakenly collected personal data, as well.
The obvious difference being I radiate infrared light incidentally.
What does "incidentally" mean? It is not your intention to broadcast infrared outside your property for others to pick up? Well, guess what, it's not Joe Public's intention to broadcast his wifi data outside his property for others to pick up either. It's just incidental to the science behind radio.
I can't stop from doing so
A sufficiently thick wall of the appropriate material would do the job.
and unless I have some scientific background, chances are I don't even know that I'm doing so.
And unless you have some technical background, chances are you don't know much about what that flashing wireless router is doing either.
It is very different from me making an active attempt to make a radio broadcast using specialized equipment.
Since Joe Public isn't making an active attempt to make a radio broadcast, I'm not sure of the relevance.
If you don't see the difference between these two scenerios, then thank god you arn't in politics or law.
Assuming? :-)
It is more like a postcard - yes, you can read it (no encryption), but it has an address.
... except for the broadcast packets.
Other than radio, it is an addressed broadcast. See, every packet has a destination written on it. That makes the argument a little more interesting. It is more like a postcard - yes, you can read it (no encryption), but it has an address. The law considers postcards to be covered by the telecommunications privacy regulations.
At best it's more like a public bulletin board in your neighborhood. You write the name of the intended recipient on the postcard, and pin it to the board. There are no magic RF fairies that deliver your 802.11 packets only to the intended recipients.
distribute personal data
It is important to note that Google didn't distribute the data. Nobody is even suggesting that (I know, not even you). People are behaving as if Google published this data on Street View - "here are the packets you can find 101 Johnson st!". As far as we know (and as Google has stated) they did not ever even look at this data.
If there's a law against only storing such data it almost runs into philosophy - is something stored if it is never accessed? Is just the potential to access it enough, even if they never do? (does a tree falling in a wood make a sound if nobody is there to hear it?). If just the potential to access it is enough then we're all guilty because we all have the "potential" to access the open Wifi networks in the first place.
Google isn't being held responsible for hearing it - Google is being held responsible for storing and indexing it.
You don't even understand what the issue is - you shouldn't be lecturing other people.
Which don't contain e-mail addresses, passwords and HTTP traffic, which this was all about, so your argument is what, exactly?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not really, their corporate slogan is "Don't be evil", that at least gives them some wiggle room.