Google Declines To Turn Over Harvested Wi-Fi Data

An anonymous reader writes "Google declined to submit data collected as part of the 'Spy-Fi' flap, and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is now promising further action: '"I certainly will be pressing for continued involvement at the federal level in coordination with the states," Blumenthal told Politico Monday, just days after promising to explore "additional enforcement actions" if Google does not share the data soon. Asked to describe what those federal efforts might include, the outgoing attorney general said, "There's a range of potential opportunities for oversight and scrutiny by a member of the US Congress – including letters, meetings, hearings, and potentially even legislation." For its part, Google has tried to defuse the issue by offering to delete the data. The company reaffirmed that position in a Friday statement, promising to work with Blumenthal in the coming weeks, but declined to comment further on Monday.'"

Comments

Should have deleted it from the start

[alvinrod]

Google should have deleted the data before they even publicly announced that they had accidentally collected it. Would have made the matter a whole lot simpler and would have left less room for political grandstanding.

Re:Should have deleted it from the start

[beakerMeep]

Destroying evidence while being investigated by the FCC/FTC is usually frowned upon. But I'm glad they are declining to hand it over for what you aptly called grandstanding. Honestly I think Google has handled it the best they can given the situation. Seeing politicians exploit the situation is beginning to irk me too though.

Re:Should have deleted it from the start

[icebike]

It'll probably end up on wikileaks once a government body gets it's paws on it; safer to chuck those discs in the microwave.

Exactly.

I'm rooting for Google to stand fast. What possible use would the government have for these account names and passwords.

When the government can prove that they can hold onto their own secret data then maybe they can be entrusted with this. (NAH, what was I thinking!?)

If it is released to the government, (AND Government) it will be leaked.

Re:Should have deleted it from the start

[qubezz]

Oh noes! Google might have recorded an unencrypted packet or two of someone checking gmail while they were driving through a neighborhood! They are clearly guilty of receiving and recording electromagnetic signals IN A FREQUENCY THAT IS PUBLIC AND UNLICENSED, by devices that were advertising their SSID and transmitting unencrypted data. Guilty of doing something completely legal and completely trivial.

I trust Google with my personal contacts and emails, documents, schedule, voice mail, etc. I do not trust and never authorized the State of Connecticut to have access to any data of mine, and neither should you. Go away extortionist attorney general.

Re:Should have deleted it from the start

[AltairDusk]

Well the whole thing just seems like an ever climbing level of stupid. First Google collects data that while not illegal certainly wouldn't look good for the company: Dumb. Then they announce it to the world: Extra Dumb The governments demand to see the data...why? Just to see if there are any juicy bits? :Really Dumb, and now Google refuses to hand any of it over rather than just redact the names and let them have the boring bits: Extra Super dumb.

First Google accidentally collected the data, they didn't do it on purpose. Then after realizing they had collected it they decided to come forward and do the right thing rather than doing what most corporations would have done and covering it up. Then instead of governments realizing "hey they screwed up and they've admitted it, we want to encourage this kind of behavior rather than cover-ups" all of the governments involved have done a fine job making the cover-up look like the smart choice over doing what's right.

Re:Sounds about right

[beakerMeep]

The fact that his answer was so evasive is actually very telling. If they had a good reason to be looking at the data they'd have a warrant in hand.

“There’s a range of potential opportunities for oversight and scrutiny by a member of the U.S. Congress – including letters, meetings hearings, and potentially even legislation.”

Translation: we got nothing, so we're gonna try and invent some reason to get the data.

Re:they didn't "accidentally" collect it

[whoever57]

This is a major privacy invasion.

I'm a little confused on how giving more people access to the data helps to ameliorate the supposed privacy invasion?

Re:Sounds about right

[TapeCutter]

"Whether or not Atty General Blumenthal has jurisdiction and the right to request that data is something that may need to be decided in a court, but SOME investigative body is certainly going to want to review the data that was collected, since it is (perhaps) evidence of wrongdoing on Google's part, and entirely relevant to an investigation into whether or not Google broke laws in collecting and retaining that data."

Evidence for what charge? What you are describing above is commonly known as a "fishing expedition". If Google has been accused of a crime then by all means go to court and get a search warrant to collect evidence, but demanding evidence so that you can go away and scour the books to see if you can find a crime is not how it's supposed to work.

Re:Sounds about right

[TapeCutter]

"There's all kinds of things that data could show, leading to any number of possible charges against (and eventual fines collected from) Google."

Sure, just like a cop without a search warrant could find lots of things in your home to hang you with. It's not about trusting either google or the government it's about the rule of law which says the authorities must have probable cause. In this case they don't have probable cause, they don't even have an allegation, which is why they don't have a search warrant.

"You're naivety is astounding!"

Voulenteering ANY information to an investigation that is spending a pile of taxpayer's money looking for a reason to hang you, is not just naive, it's stupid.

Re:they didn't "accidentally" collect it

[guruevi]

1) Yes you can accidentally retain sniffed traffic logs. Run Kismet for instance. I have once accidentally left it on, sniffing all encrypted and non-encrypted traffic in my neighborhood (~15 networks) for about 48 hours: ~10GB. Google did not sniff all traffic, it only sniffed (or sampled) a few packets from every hotspot (maybe 10-20kb). With standard disk sizes being 250GB it takes a really, really long time to fill up your disk with random samples.

2) People are pissed for what? Not securing their own wireless? Transmitting their passwords in clear text over an insecure medium? They only correlated what any WLAN tracker/sniffer can provide. If you own a wireless network you might know that your MAC addresses and SSID's get transferred and being able to correlate them against GPS locations has been done not just by Google. Even so, it's still legal in most places to receive radio transmissions (since it's physically impossible not to) and you can do whatever you want with them those transmitting those radio transmissions should know that there can be eavesdroppers anywhere.

3) It's not slightly creepy. I have done it as have probably many others here. Ever been at a location where you need internet? Maybe at your local coffee shop or at a hotel? You open your laptop and scan for networks hoping to find an unsecured one - you're now wardriving. Doing it for profit has been done before, there are companies that sell these databases successfully since at least the last '90's, not just Google.