Google Broke the Law, Say South Korean Police

bonch writes "South Korean police say Google was in violation of Internet privacy laws when its Street View service archived private information in more than 30 countries, including email and text messages. The country's Cyber Terror Response Center broke the encryption on hard drives raided from Google last August and confirmed that private information had been gathered, violating South Korea's telecommunications laws. Police are seeking the original author of the program, though they say it is likely to be a US citizen. Google said it stopped collecting the information as soon as it realized what was happening. 40 states in the US are demanding access to the information gathered by the mapping service in order to determine what was archived, which Google refused to hand over. 'We have been cooperating with the Korean Communications Commission and the police, and will continue to do so,' said a Google Korea spokesperson."

Comments

I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[rolfwind]

This isn't a defense of Google. It just seems that corporations are never called to task for deplorable behavior unless they forgot to grease the right wheels.

Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[lexidation]

Where exactly does the dividing line between "spends millions on lobbying and campaign contributions" and "bribes politicians outright" get drawn? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. It seems to me there's something broken in the system, something which will never get fixed because it underwrites the ambitions of the people in power.

Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[commodore64_love]

The downfall of the Athenian Empire alone proves that pure democracy (as you propose in your letter) is a bad idea.

Pure democracy can also be called "tyranny of the majority" as the minority voice is drowned-out. Or worse: Crushed. Just ask the Americans that were imprisoned during World War 2, simply because the majority decided they did not like the minority who looked different (i.e. asian). The purpose of a Republic is to have a Supreme Law that protects the minority from such abuses, and which no one, ideally, can remove by a simple 51% vote. The Law of Individual Rights reigns supreme even above the government or its representatives, and can not be revoked.

It isn't a perfect system, but it's certainly much better than a Democracy. Socrates was killed with a simply 51% vote. No trial; no lawyers; nothing to protect his right to speak his mind. The Demos killed him because they didn't like him. That's what a democracy gives you.

Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[commodore64_love]

>>>I suppose you find it easier to just let government corruption continue unabated.

Strawman argument. I never said that, but I'd still rather have the protections given to me by the current Law of the Republic (rights to free speech, trial, privacy, etc) then to have a Democracy where my voice would be drowned-out by a 51% majority of uneducated boobs that would lock me up simply because I'm gay. Or black. Or asian. Or atheist. Or anti-War on Terror. Or whatever.

As for the problems we face today, most would disappear if we followed the 9th and 10th Amendments instead of ignoring them. No more bailouts of AIG, or forced purchasing of hospital insurance I don't want, or war on (some) drugs, or giving "stimulus money" to General Motors, and so on. Congress is forbidden, by the tenth, to do those things.

Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[beerbear]

Right now your voice is being drowned-out by a minority with money.

Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[commodore64_love]

IMHO this all boils down to various Governments wanting to maintain their MONOPOLY on the right to spy. Take the example of Britain where Google got in trouble because their CameraCar caught somebody's wash hanging outside. First off Google did nothing wrong - if you have your undies in view of the front street, then you're just plain stupid. Second you have no right to forbid Google or Me or anybody else from photographing it.

But the UK government decided otherwise, ordered google to erase the undies image, and fined them. Meanwhile that same UK government has cameras installed on every fucking street that are capturing everything from Undies hanging in front yards to... well, fucking.

But that's okay. It's okay for the Government to maintain its Monopoly to spy on us.
Google and other private photographers get slapped down; but the government invades our privacy every day.

Re:I wonder who they forgot to bribe?

[commodore64_love]

>>>ballots to Republican and Democrat.

In my state if you are a third party, like Libertarian or Communist or Constitutionalist or Green, you must either win 10% of the previous vote or collect signatures from 5% of the population. Since the standard is set so high, the ballot is effectively banned to anybody but the R and D parties. It's a way for them to maintain their control.

Ironically if the R or D parties don't meet these standards (don't get 10% of the vote, or 5% of signatures), it doesn't matter. They are automatically added.

Before someone gives the reductionist answer

[Compaqt]

that all Giggle was doing was recording aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum that was hitting their equipment:

What's the limit to that?

Is it also OK to record faint sound waves emitted from a given StreetView address?

Is it also OK to record GSM cell phone transmissions (recently shown vulnerable to cracking)?

Is it also OK to set up a listening device to log the electromagnetic signature emitted by monitors and keyboards, and then associate that with a given StreetView address in your database?

Would it also be OK to use a high-power lens to record photons leaking beyond a window that you thought you had pulled the curtain on?

Would it also be OK to record infrared heat signatures of building occupants walking around or doing whatever?

And if a "normal" person (not a corporation with cute logo) did all this, wouldn't he be arrested for stalking?

Re:Before someone gives the reductionist answer

[commodore64_love]

A reasonable limit might be to disallow recording of any sound (or sight) that is not detectable by human ears/eyes.

So if the sound is below, say, 10 dB then it would be forbidden by private persons/companies to record it. Or if the EM captured is below 50 lux(?) that too would be forbidden to record. That would stop them from using super-sensitive equipment to hear conversations in the kitchen, or take a peak into darkened bedrooms.

Encryption broken?

[hcs_$reboot]

“We succeeded in breaking the encryption behind the hard drives, and confirmed that it contained personal e-mails and text messages of people using the Wi-Fi networks,” said a [Korean] police official.

I was however assuming
1. that in such case Google would have been legally forced to provide the encryption key,
2. and anyway, that a HD encrypted by Google wouldn't be so (apparently) easy to break.

Re:The South Korean Government is no fan of Google

[John Saffran]

The real-name laws in korea were created for two reasons:

1. Serious instances of unfounded slandering against various people, especially celebrities.but not restricted to them. The aim is to encourage people to behave responsibly on the internet by tieing what they post or upload back to the individual, beyond that the SK government doesn't give a rat's arse what you do online or which sites you go to.

Case in point being, to continue with your example, that Google (or more specifically Youtube) was required either to have a system to point back to the real-person or alternatively restrict the ability to post or upload potentially slanderous material. Google chose the latter and it's worthy of note that people can do everything else, eg. view videos.

Basically it's the side effect of having the highest rate of internet participation in the world .. you get all sorts of people just like normal society, including those who enjoy malicious rumour mongering and think they can engage in that behind the privacy of the internet. Ironically in a large proportion of cases it turns out the posters were immature school kids (including primary schoolers) being just that .. immature.


2. Many government functions that in real-life require authentication are fully online. This is probably beyond the experience of most people on slashdot, but you can do all sorts of personal activities online (eg. taxation, etc) and by definition you can't take people at their word when talking about those. Therefore real-name identification is required there also, particularly as there's rampant attempts at ID theft from china for various reasons.

Ironically your post is a perfect example of scenario 1, ie. malicious slandering by people hiding behind internet anonymity, in the manner in which you deliberately twist the SK's request and google's actions with unsubstantiated additions like:

- It's no secret that the South Korean government isn't overly fond of Google

Hardly, the government has only required that google comply with the laws that were created to address the previously listed comments. Beyond that Google has been free to operate as it sees fit .. calling that repressive is ridiculous, the government doesn't track people's activities nor are companies required to do anything beyond enabling the tracking down of people for legal purposes, eg. lawsuits for slander.

We're not talking about china and it's so-called golden shield (or shower to be more accurate).


- Google chose to block posts to YouTube from Korea

No, google chose to remove the functionality to post without an account liked to a real person. To quote from the article:

YouTube has decided to restrict its video upload and comment functions in South Korea.” It also stated, “Because there is no upload function, users won’t be required to confirm their identification.”

Note that viewing videos is not restricted at all and uploads/comments to sites that are linked to a real-person are unrestricted beyond the uploader being aware that they should be sociable in their behaviour.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google simply didn't feel it cost effective to create complex functionality that would be country specific (with all the possibilities that different countries would then start asking for their own items) so it was easier to simply remove rather than add.

- while encouraging those users to change their country preference to somewhere else

Where exactly did they say that?



It's fair to say that your post is a perfect example of what the law is designed to address, slanderers hiding behind anonymity to post all sorts of lies and half-truths. We'd all like to think that this type of people don't exist, but unfortunately some people only feel better by putting others down, one only has to look a

Re:Encryption standards?

[Arancaytar]

I RTFA, and the "breaking the encryption" was a direct quote from the police. So it's not the reporters being stupid.

However, it's quite possibly the police lying to sound more badass.