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OpenStreetMap Reports Data Vandalism From Google-Owned IPs
An anonymous reader writes "Following reports of misconduct by Google employees in Kenya and India, It has been found that Google IP addresses have been responsible for deliberate vandalism of OpenStreetMap data. While it is unlikely that this was a deliberate or coordinated attack by Google HQ on the competition, multiple such reports does raise the question of whether or not Google has become too big to effectively enforce its 'Don't be evil' philosophy across its massive organization."
Troll alert Troll alert Troll alert
First post will be by TechGuys at the same time as story rolls out.
Well thought-out, including links, bashing Google, calling for Google to be broken up.
Will throw in an apple bash
Nary a bad word about MS or FB
Troll alert Troll alert Troll alert
It's starting to sound like Google needs to reign in their over-eager foreign subsidiaries.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Like every other big company, Google has learned that "evil" is where the money is.
Disconcerting. What next now, Norton producing viruses?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
All the companies that I used to love are doing shit these days. What's happening?
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
Google has become too big to effectively enforce it's 'Do no evil' philosophy across its massive organization.
It's all coming from one branch.
Google karma points are are 1/5th the cost in Kenya and India, but Indian workers come back as ...
These stories are so suspicious, partly because all the accounts commetning seem to be registered at roughly the same time. Is there a reference from OSM?
OpenStreetMap is a very good project, it is basically the Wikipedia of Maps. Wikipedia even links to OpenStreetMap when you look up co-oridnates for articles such as cities. It can also be more up-to date in areas that are having heavy construction. For example a major new bypass road was built in my city and it was added to OpenStreetMap the day it opened. Google maps still doesn't have it even a year later.
Support OpenStreetmap, I hope they do a SOPA blackout to show how useful they are in places where Google Maps isn't as good.
On the same blogpost,
Tom Hughes said...
As the person who (in my role as an OpenStreetMap system administrator) first discovered this `incident' let me start by saying that I consider this post to be grossly irresponsible and wholly inappropriate.
The board of OSMF are making mountains out of tiny pimples here. It seems that they want this to be some sort of organised corporate malfeasance on the part of Google which is why they have tried to link it to the recent Mocality incident where there was indeed clear evidence of such behaviour.
The reality in this case is that there is no evidence that this is any different to the numerous other incidents we get all the time where users either accidentally or deliberately make bogus edits. The only difference in this case is that there happen to be two accounts (though we do not know if that is two people) and the user or users involved happen to (presumably) work for Google.
That is the sum total of what we know, and on the back of that, and without approaching Google at all, two leading board members have decided to reveal personal information about two of our users.
It seems to me that this is just an attempt to get some cheap publicity by trying to like the project to the Mocality incident, and I cannot support such behaviour.
The larger organizations get, the harder it becomes to enforce whatsoever organization-wide. They acquire their own dynamics; one of the most important of that self-perpetuating dynamical processes & characteristics is mediocrity. Doing bad things, or at least a readiness in some individuals to do them, is part of that mediocrity. It is similar to what made many IBM products almost too complex to use, and an ungovernable mastodont out of, say, Bell and IBM, as corporations. I personally noticed the same thing at Airbus.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Ok, so some disgruntled employees of Google have been caught munging and corrupting data intentionally.
That's a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
But it misses the most important question to me: WHY would someone do this?
To discredit Google, revenge on a "cruel" and "vicious" employer or manager?
To cause mayhem and accidents in India and elsewhere?
To make sure their favourite curry shop can't be found by others so they don't have to wait in line with the "stinking masses"?
What would POSSIBLY be the purpose of messing up street map data?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
So... just for clarification, does an IP identify somebody? or not?
I'm fairly certain that when I visited the GooglePlex they had a publically accessible WIFI connection. Do those count as Google owned IPs?
raise the question of whether or not Google has become too big to effectively enforce it's 'Do no evil' philosophy across its massive organization.
Do not confuse a marketing slogan for a philosophy.
As others have pointed out, this seems to be a storm in a teacup. If it leads to more participation in OSM, however, it'll be a good thing. I recently installed the Navfree android app (free onboard maps GPS, there's an IOS version too), and noticed a number of small inaccuracies in my neighborhood. Correcting them was really pretty easy; the maps around me already seem pretty usable, and with a bit more tweaking will be as good as any of the commercial alternatives. When I had first looked at it a couple of years ago the maps around me were pretty dire, so they've come a long way. House numbering seems to be the big remaining issue for navigation system use.
I'm told that IP addresses are not identity.
IP addresses can be spoofed as can mac addresses.
Is this true?
Or maybe there are different rules when the Big Bad Google is involved?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Is Hollywood running a smear campaign? Did RIAA/MPAA execs order staffers to dig up as much dirt as they could against their new enemy? What is the involvement of Rupert Murdoch and his personal vendetta against the "Silicon Valley paymasters"?
Next on 60 minutes.
Google has open public WiFi available on many of its offices that you can pick up from across the street. You can't easily tell machines on those networks from internal machines.
Just pointing that out.
Seriously, why is it "unlikely that this was a deliberate or coordinated attack by Google HQ on the competition"
Just because Google's motto is "do no evil" they sure don't live up to it...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Google's motto isn't "Do no evil", it's "Don't be evil". You can do as much evil actions as you want as long as you're doing them for a good cause (Google's success), then you aren't being evil.
Sadly, I'm an anon, so nobody will read this, BUT:
Google used to have a product called "Google Web Accelerator" which was, essentially, a Google proxy that operated similar to the idea behind Kindle Fire: Make the proxy crunch images and the like to make the browser work faster.
While using it, I noticed that IP reporting sites would all show that I was coming from Google in Mountain View, CA. ... who's to say that a savvy vandal simply isn't using GWA?
IP addressed do give out their identity, just not, usually, enough to narrow down to a person that actually performed the action. If it is part of a static block owned by someone, you know it is was used somewhere within their network (unless you suspect the IP was faked at the BGP level, and the attacker is skilled enough to perform it, and what was gained is significant enough). To narrow it down to the person that actually performed it, you would need the logs of all network activity, which associates network access with some sort of person identifying authentication. I dont think any one really does this, so there you go, you cannot identify the person, but you can identify the network.
Sorry, but "starting to" suggests Google's recent actions are somehow different or new. Google has been deliberately and willfully evil for years now. If memory serves, Google has revealed the names of Chinese dissidents in the past (single citation being used, though going back you do find more), and gleefully gave in to the Chinese government too many times to cite all of them, all in the name of a bit of dosh.
Why is ANY of this a surprise? Companies that have a great product, a great service, that lose focus on what their foundation is in favor of making money, will always do this, at least every instance I've seen. Even smaller companies. I'll use a local example; Here in the Boston area there is (or I should say "was") a great ice cream store named more or less for the neighborhood it was founded in. The ice cream was, to put it mildly, pure heaven. Even in the dead of winter people flocked to their locations, what they had was just that good. Over the years the quality has gone down considerably in direct proportion to how much the founder began making. Once he got some investment money from other parties, the bottom line became a bigger issue. Employees who had been with him from the first day he'd opened were fired because they looked "different" (it was a haven for artistic, counter culture people back in the 80s and to the mid 90s) and didn't fit in with his new "professional" look. The product they made became just sort of average. Walk into any chain ice cream store, and you'll get the same product. However their profits skyrocketed and they continue to do business not due to the ice cream, but the name.
Google has become no different. They own the market, and they know it. Rather than focus on doing what they do best, and NOT doing it in an evil way, they what... Release a browser, a (rather sad) OS, they see Facebook take off and using a page from Microsoft's playbook say "Why didn't WE think of that?" and come out with their own, much to the delight of dozens. Now Google is stooping to the same bush league dirty pool that other companies do.
Is anyone really surprised?
If Google is doing this, it's not good. However, when you think about it... If a map CAN be defaced, can it be reliable? Perhaps they need some sort of moderated change system. This system need not be heavily reliant on human oversight. But for something that need be authoritative, changes should be controlled.
Do No Evil? Every company does the opposite of their motto. Think Different? This Changes Everything? Your World Delivered? Think? Yeah, not really.
it replicates itself through advertising and marketing and stupid hosts. once it installs on some computer, it doesnt go away unless wipe the thing clean with a format.
i installed it once in 1996 or something. the shock was so great that i have never, ever used anything that was remotely affiliated with norton. what's more appalling is that, they have not changed their behavior since the passing 14 years.
Read radical news here
You started believing everything you read online without anything close to proof. It's not the companies that changed, it's your level of gullibility.
If Google Central come down hard on "their" Kenyan employees, or at least install mandatory checking on the machines that send via that IP address (their own hardware, so it's possible to check out IP addresses being spoofed) to find out definitely that their employees are at fault before sacking them for criminal acts, then this will be a storm in a teacup.
If they find someone spoofing the IP addresses and locating that entity, that will be 100x worse for them.
So this is definitely a manageable problem for Google: this act is criminal. You CAN sack your employees for committing a crime.
WON'T BE STANDING the7 are Come on
Slashdot not publish stories like: Apple sued for extortion, Microsoft licenses patents to LG for Android, Microsoft confirms UEFi fears and locks down ARM devices?
Why does every unconfirmed Google smear story by this "TechGuy" shill seems to be immediately published?
Just to be clear, you're criticizing the fact that you believe someone will post something well thought-out and sourced with links. The horror!
Notice how the very first post to this negative story on Google is a defensive, accusatory post intended to distract people from the story by turning everyone against anyone who will be critical of Google. You don't like the position someone will take on Google, and so that automatically means they're a troll and you get modded up? That's stupid.
The moderation system has broken down. My karma has suffered from "shill" accusations because I, too, have posted things critical of Google in the past and had this same anonymous person track all my posts. The new psychosis seems to be that you are not allowed to criticize anything Google-related or else anonymous accusers call you a shill, and enough moderators go along with it to filter you off the site.
... it's "Don't be evil".
Yesterday, it was too big to fail. Today it is too big to succeed. Everything is wrong and right and the moon, well, the moon is made of green cheese.
not ran by pro google people? Since they even say that google still has the "no evil" policy is just BS
They went into China for business and took part into privacy infringment of their users in streetview and what not!
They use opensource software, adjust and do not contribute back to the community (RPG license).
Please...... Google is just another company that would lvoe to become rich at your and other users it expense!
People got fired at google that did their job and people stayed that did not! I can continue for ages like this!
Search is supplying results these days I do not need and they say I do!
Please slashdot...... go get your head out of your ass and smell the sunshine instead of your own farts (Southpark)
Google has little, if any, financial interest in map data. They buy all of it from sources like NavTeq and GDI. I suspect Google could replace these sources with their own collection efforts - if they wanted to. It is a huge task and to do quality work takes a lot of effort. It would appear that Google would rather buy than build.
Now, if someone found NavTeq screwing with someone's map data I could understand. They have a huge financial interest (as in the whole company) in map data and being the primary vendor of routable map data for the US.
So, I can't imagine any purpose behind Google or Google's employees having anything to do with this intentionally.
An IP address does identify someone.
Let me put it to you this way.
An IP address is sort of like the phone number on a poster which reads, "CAT: must go. incontinence too much. free to good home. call xxx-xxx-xxxx before Valentine's Day if you want a live delivery."
It's someone's number.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
bonch bonch bonch... you stand accused of being a shill because you post the same text from multiple accounts. You even reply to your own posts from other accounts. You always try to get first post in an attempt to redirect the discussion from the actual story. It is always the same old crap, bash Google, praise Apple, even when the story is unrelated. It's not the pro Apple perspective that is annoying - this shit would be just as annoying if you constantly posted pro Google rants to every story, with the same lame points copied and pasted every time... "Seamless experiences win out.. ", "Android phones used to look like this", "RMS supports child porn"... You also seem to have a particular problem with people who have Aspergers. That's not very nice. "Like most Android fanbois, you are an antisocial neckbeard with Aspergers Syndrome"
If an employee of an airline, or Walmart, Macy, McDonald's, Marriott's... misbehaves, every one need to know. Google is no exception. The company will have to clean up their acts with better training, better ethic standards for their employees.
By the way Firefox version 8's and 9's have been "calling home" to Google. If you are one Linux, turn on firewall logging for all out going packets, especially for port 443 (SSL), you will see continuous connections to google.com and 1e100.net -- even with Firefox sitting idle. Only puting Firefox in offline mode would these connections stop. Firefox is now one of Google's b!tches. I'm surprised no one call them out on this yet.
They might get less vandalism if they limited data entry to Apps, not command line input.
Eg, most of our geo-data comes from apps. Its more trusted since its unpopular to spoof GPS in an app.
Jim Pruett, Director
WikiSPEEDia.org
App hooks to your cruise control.
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I look forward to the resulting Google defense that an IP address can easily be spoofed and does not equal a person (or company).
See Mr Judge, if Google says it the RIAA must be wrong.
IMHO, Google abandoned it's "Don't be evil" mantra long ago when they began evading taxes.
I'm told that IP addresses are not identity.
IP addresses can be spoofed as can mac addresses.
Is this true?
Or maybe there are different rules when the Big Bad Google is involved?
IP addresses are not identity the same way cell phone numbers are not identity. HTH and HAND.
Sooner or later any large enough corporation is going to accidentally employ psychopaths into managerial positions.
The critical thing is that they identify them and remove them.
Looks like this might not be happening effectively at Google.
Maybe the OP was sensitive to Google blatantly copying OSM ways of entering data, specially in Africa.
I must say I indeed was shocked when reading, for instance, this relation:
http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/04/11/1635
Herve S.
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18/google_blames_contractors/
Two Google contractors are now ex-contractors, as one could have predicted.
lol
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?