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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.'"
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.
Yes, the government is certainly a safe place to store sensitive data, what is google thinking?
"letters, meetings, hearings" - If that doesn't scare the bejesus out of Google, I don't know what will.
I wonder if anyone involved in this is thinking of the digital data as if it were physical. i.e. if Google gives it to the Government, Google doesn't have it anymore. They certainly seem to be trying to think of data that way when copyright's involved.
So let me see. The government is saying "Bad Google, shouldn't have collected all that data. That's private data that belongs to our citizens, not to you, even though it was broadcast in the clear. Now that we've established that only the originator should have that data.... let me have a peek! No, don't delete it - I really wanna see."
Very consistent. Not hypocritical at all.
They said they would delete, just do so, effectively telling the gov't to f' off, which they need to hear from time to time.
Apparently Google has already given some or all of the sniffed data to authorities in Germany, Spain and France. I wonder why the US is causing so much more controversy?
Perhaps the US government is asking for more data (eg data from other countries) or has refused to meet conditions Google had set for the European governments, when handing over their shares of the data?
I think perhaps the headache for Google is that they may be required under US law to hold all records for 7 years -- since any data collected is a 'record', they simply can't delete it without the authorisation of the US Government, else they could find themselves in trouble, corporately-speaking. However, it seems this particular politician wants to engage in a little electronic-voyeurism -- which although unsurprising is still a bit unsettling -- and is standing in the way of Google obtaining the necessary exemptions to delete the data.
He will do anything to keep his face in the media.
Don't know which is worse, Google collecting it, or it being turned over to government.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This information is still available, you just have to drive around collecting it. The government could attach sniffers to all postal trucks and quickly map out the entire country, they don't need Google. Of course it would be highly unpopular if someone tries to do it.
....like letting more people have access to it
Wouldn't the state just extradite and prosecute? What is different in the process for a corporation?
They would ignore it. Fun fact for you: Google was doing the same thing thousands of hobbiests are doing every day using the same tools. But it's different for Google since there's political hay to be made.
Wouldn't the state just extradite and prosecute?
No!!! It is fashionable now to start an investigation on rape allegations first... as a foreplay. Jumping straight into extradition is totally bad-taste.
What is different in the process for a corporation?
You see... it is very hard to alllege an entire corporation raped 2 women... but I reckon they'll be working on it for the future.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I'm just glad our government has found something else to focus on other than the economy, tax reform, the 2 wars we're involved in, net neutrality or any of the other pressing issues that are so difficult to tackle.
Im pretty sure the real reason the govt want the data is because they want a map over every wifi but they cant get one themselves. As soon as Google hands it over it will slip onto every three letter agency in the US. Make a database out of it and you can pinpoint just about anyone with ease by help of your friendly ISP.
HTTP/1.1 400
The government has no right to access this incorrectly and even illegally collected data. Google has confessed their mistake, now they should delete that data and receive the punishment for their actions. If Google doesn't agree with the verdict, then they can choose to use the data to help their case, and not the other way around (where the Government uses the data to make their case.)
Isn't the problem in question the fact that they gained private data? They got in trouble because of privacy converns And now the govenment want that data, isn't that effectively doubling the problem. Govt "you shouldn't gather personal data with out authorisation" Google "sorry, we will delete it" Govt "No that's not good enough" Google "well what is" Govt "Give it to us. We need to make sure we gather as much information as possible from your crime so as we can 'claim to be doing something'" Google "Uh... Wait!... What??? Piss off" Govt "LAWSUIT!!!" Yea, I stand by google on this one. The govt has the biggest store of ill gotten personal information in the planet. Who would you trust?
1)You don't "accidentally" retain sniffed traffic logs of that size, across your entire international operations, for months if not years, "accidentally." See http://gizmodo.com/5671049/google-street-view-cars-collected-emails-and-passwords I mean come on...someone would have noticed the drives filling up, wondered why, etc. These people are supposedly geniuses, right?
2)There's no political grandstanding here. This is a major privacy invasion. The "grandstanding" has been international, because people are PISSED. Google collected and correlated with location data...MAC addresses and IPs of base stations and client devices. Email addresses. Passwords. URLs. I'm going to be VERY generous and assume that they only captured the sniffed traffic, and not that they intentionally extracted all that from traffic and only stored the extracted data, because that would have been even more obviously-intentional.
3)It's slightly creepy when you go around wardriving. When an international corporation which has a always demonstrated an intense interest in profiling its users and mining its users data for advertising purposes, does it, across the planet? That's just slightly different.
Please help metamoderate.
No, but if he accidentally photocopies it and every other postcard he happens to see, you might reasonably ask questions.
Maybe, but Google is one of the 5 companies I think is smart enough to play the Long-Script game.
Of course they could have played Corporation Games and squashed it, but instead maybe they're using a carefully chosen test-case to get certain predictable events "over with".
Right after the early Dot-Com crash I (among many to be sure) I noticed the Gaping Abyss concept: once the original "This Time Will Be Different" sales-mood of Dot Com 1.0 crashed, I felt that medium-soon we'll just be staring at a bunch of years of "small-village boredom" ahead of us. When small villages become bored, the members get into each other's business with a hyper-sensitive event amplifier. "Oh my gawd, Catcher in the Rye has Bad Words in it!"
Okay, if Web 1.0 was Sales, 2.0 was Sharing, one candidate for 3.0 is Walled Garden & Censorship, and I speculate that 4.0 will be a Privacy Revolt.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What makes you naive people believe that Google wasn't collecting this data at the behest of the NSA ?
The same thing that makes me believe (a) our government is not guarding extraterrestrial technology in Area 51, and (b) the Apollo landings on the moon could not have been fabricated. Conspiracies with more than 20 people never work. Although I admit life would be more interesting if they did.
I believe that someone's always playing Corporation Games.
AT&ROFLMAO
Okay, if Web 1.0 was Sales, 2.0 was Sharing, one candidate for 3.0 is Walled Garden & Censorship, and I speculate that 4.0 will be a Privacy Revolt.
How about a revolt against the inane idea that the web has version numbers? Or that the web as a whole even has some sort of overarching narrative?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Thanks AC. .. er... Typing in high school.
I didn't take "Computer Science"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm having fun with the version numbers based on Buzzword Bingo, but I do think there's the overarching narrative effect. Since I'm not that original, I'm pretty sure someone out there has a Citation.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The US government is FOR data-sharing now? Igor! Release the Assange clones!
I assume 2.0 refers to the early-2000s "golden age" of file sharing (in terms of the number of file sharers), and the current social media fits into 3.0 (which I truly hope is a fad and not a new way of doing things...if it's a fad, I think we're approaching the bust point).
Can't wait for 4.0, social media needs to die as a business. Human relationships should not be commercialized.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Most of this is Rupert Murdoch's media sources pointing out that his main competitor for the advertising dollar could be almost as evil as one of his British newspapers. Didn't you all notice the Murdoch media raving for a while about how google was evil even before this mistake landed in their journalists laps?
First of all this isn't like sending secret info on a postcard. It's like shouting it over a megaphone. Anyone listening can hear it, no special action required.
And like all human brains remember everything they hear whether they like to or not, the flawed software on the Street View cars recorded everything, regardless of what it was.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The fact that they admitted to it?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If the data was gathered illegally, then legally it shouldn't be used for anything. It should be deleted. How is replicating the data going to fix the situation? They shouldn't be looking at it or combing through it, they shouldn't be spreading it around, so why aren't they ordering it deleted? Why do they want the data?
Twinstiq, game news
Umm, the MAC addresses weren't collected accidentally. Google readily admits that they were collecting MAC addresses and location data to build their own version of the SkyHook location database. That's not the issue.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You really think that data collection was purely accidental? And it didn't strike you that they haven't turned the "feature" off between the start of street view mapping and the end of it, which took a lengthy amount of time?
I'm sure the data collected reached its intended destination.
Pointing at others, are you?
No. Pointing at me. I'm one of those people.
Of course the difference is the MASSIVE SCALE of google's sniffing operations. Fun fact for you: there's a difference between one guy sniffing around in his neighborhood, and one of the biggest companies in the world or a huge government sniffing out everybody, by design and system.
Fair enough point. But scale alone does change things. What's legal for me is legal for Google.
Of course you are going to disagree, but you won't explain what political advantage there was to be gained anyway either, because there is none, and empirically the government is proven not to give a sh*t about your privacy or your perception about them giving a sh*t about your privacy.
You're entirely wrong. Public officials care very much about perception. They do a lot of things for perception alone. They may not care about a particular individual. But they will do things to make large groups of people feel good about them and their job (or future jobs).
Let me put it another way. Port scanning and scanning for security bugs is not illegal. What if google or the government scanned EVERY computer for such things, whether they are open, and read and store as much as they can off the harddrive such as passwords and private information? I guess if you're a fanboy, you'd find that just fine, because some hobbyist can scan a port as well. It would scare the hell out of a normal person.
You're probably going to be terrified at what you find at google.com then. They scan open systems every day. Put in the right search and you'll find passwords and other private information.
I get your concern. But it is misplaced.
Yes, let's imagine a world where that is the standard of evidence required:
"Mr. Simpson, did you murder your wife?"
"No Your Honor, I did not."
"Okay then, I think we're done here! Have a great day everybody."
Or maybe,
"Mr. Gates, did you use your company's monopoly position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and unfairly stifle competition?"
"No Your Honor, I certainly did not."
"Well then, since you're wearing glasses and look smart, I have to conclude you're telling the truth. Case dismissed!"
If collecting the data involves intercepting network traffic and recording it, then the collection and warehousing of that data is certainly a legal issue.
To further refine your example, this case is rather like somebody publicly admitting, "I have blood on my shirt, and I recently killed someone," and then sitting back and expecting the police NOT to investigate that public admission of wrongdoing.
You're right. Let's get rid of the bars, clubs, and strip joints.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
You're using fear words like "terror" as if that should invoke something. I suspect you're confused. Let me re-hash my points so you don't overlook them.
Google is doing nothing overtly strange. The war-driving Google was doing is no different than the war-driving thousands of others are doing. I do it because I find it interesting to see what's out there. Google does it because it wants to map whats out there and use it as another source for geolocation. In both cases, the "personal data" that's being picked up is accidental.
Why do I say your concerns are misplaced? Because, as far as I can tell, you're misguided in to thinking Google is running around logging personal information and feeding it in to their vast data trove. Of course - that's my assumption because, despite your snarky comments on me "ploinking" your points, you haven't made much of an effort yourself at explaining your point and are rather quick to dismiss anything that doesn't fall in line with your general fear-of-Google line.
I should point out to you that war-driving is an ineffective way to gather information. You will, by chance, pick up bits and pieces here and there; an email password, maybe a partial web page, etc. Most of the packet capture is going to be pretty useless. Part of that is due to moving around and altering signal strength. A lot of it is due to the need to hop channels to find access points. If you really wanted to gather data, you would war drive first to identify your target and then sit stationary at a target for an extended period of time to capture traffic. I have seen nothing that indicates that this is what Google was doing.
And so, with further clarification in mind, I repeat... I get your concern for privacy but I find it misplaced. You really should worry more about people like me. Or, worse yet, people with the same basic skillset as me but motivated to do something nefarious with that skillset.
Exactly *what* private data is Google intending to profit from? It makes a big difference.
If what they're doing is collecting bank account passwords, then, yes it's nefarious, even though the data was unencrypted.
If what they're doing is associating IPs with geo-locations, as they claim, I don't really like it, but I don't see anything really wrong. And it's clear how they could profit from that information.
They claim to be doing the second, and I see no reason to disbelieve them. They claim to have collected some data of the first sort by accident. I wish they'd destroy it, though I understand why they can't at the moment.
There's a couple of federal agencies that are supposed to be investigating this. One has cleared Google of malice and basically said "Go and sin no more". The other is still considering. These agencies have proper grounds, and have been dealt with reasonably. The Connecticut AG is a grandstanding politico on the make. He doesn't have grounds. He doesn't have a case. He's making political speeches. Google correctly told him to come back with a warrant, and he's trying to figure out something that he can escalate into grounds for one. Given that he just needs to find one pliable judge, he will likely get a warrant for something eventually. It won't be just, but it's the kind of corruption of the justice system that politics encourages.
What Google should have done was heavily redacted the documents, and then destroyed the originals before announcing the problem. Hindsight is marvelous. And it's too late to do it now without massive consequences.
Do I trust Google? No. But in this particular case I trust Google more than I trust the Connecticut A.G.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Those don't log your personal info and sell it to advertisers, show your information when you're not physically present, lock you in, or demand that you use your real name, so I'll let them slide.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Where you don't "actually" believe something, but instead you say it because you correctly predicted the next 5 responses. Very very hard to do properly, but if you get it right you get a major victory of some kind.
My best example so far is Apple vs. RIAA and DRM. Apple played it darn near perfectly to shut down random WMA-type DRM.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually, I had it as one series back -
both Pets.com and "golden age files" is 1.0
I see "info sharing" a la forums and Facebook as the 2.0 that's cresting now.
We're just starting to see ominous abuses of privacy and rights, which makes for a long, dark, 3.0.
So somehow, probably like Digital-Sixties, we'll get really really tired of living Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451, and we'll mashup distibuted stuff, anonymous credit cards, and some new legislation in 2014 as a rebellion.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There probably is no real privacy issue with the data collected. However, what Google did was collect a huge amount of data that makes them the vendor of choice for marketing data on WiFi routers and other wireless devices.
You see, they know all about what people have in their homes and what manufacturers have what penetration in specific geographic areas. So you can see that perhaps D-Link is used more affluent neighborhoods where NetGear is preferred in lower priced apartments. This information is worth millions and you can be sure that Google is selling it.
Collecting this wasn't a mistake no matter how much protesting might be done about it. Collecting packets was absolutely necessary for their mission. It also informed them (and their data customers) how much encryption is being used on these routers. All of this is extremely valuable information and (was) utterly unavailable any other way.
So now we have all participated in Google having something else to sell. I for one thing they should be subjected to 100% taxation on these ill-gotten gains.