Canada Says Google Wi-Fi Sniffing Collected Personal Data

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @10:19AM from the coming-late-to-the-party dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Canada's privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, has announced that Google's recent Wi-Fi sniffing was a serious violation of Canadians' privacy rights and included the collection of personally identifiable information. Stoddart's team, who traveled to Google's Mountain View headquarters to examine the data, found complete e-mails, e-mail addresses, usernames and passwords, names and residential telephone numbers and addresses. Google has been asked to do four things before the Canadian Government would consider the matter resolved."

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Expectation of Privacy by bem · 2010-10-20 10:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you stand on a public street, it is legal to take pictures of anything you see: there is no expectation of privacy in public.
If you stand naked in your front yard, you have no expectation of privacy.
If you stand on your front porch and shout out your Visa number, you have no expectation of privacy.
If you buy a toy AM transmitter from Radio Shack and broadcast your SSN, you have no expectation of privacy.
But put it in cleartext on an 802.11g router... and you expect privacy?