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Canada Says Google Wi-Fi Sniffing Collected Personal Data
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."
This is a country that is considering baning the KFC double down. Keep your logic to your own country
This company's CEO actually said that only people who have something to hide care about privacy. They were caught archiving WiFi network information--not just collecting it, but "accidentally" storing it. Sure, the company that wants to collect and index everything forgot to configure its network scanners and data archivers properly. Android is manipulated and controlled by the carriers who are slapping on unremoable junkware.
It's as if readers of Slashdot are stuck in a 2000 time warp where Google is the benevolent upstart using cheap Linux computers. This is not some friendly open source company--their search engine is as closed source as ever. They offer free services like email and web browsing to get your data indexed for advertising purposes.
I just keep waiting for the backlash to happen. It happened with Apple--every Apple story on Slashdot now gets overrun with haters. Apparently, Google can flat-out tell everyone it doesn't give a shit about privacy, and many Slashdotters don't care.