Slashdot Mirror
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."
Disconcerting. What next now, Norton producing viruses?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
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.
From a comment on the first linked page:
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. ...
Only two of the seventeen accounts mentioned appear to have done anything identified as improper, and we have no idea how many of those accesses relate to those accounts or indeed to signed in vs not signed in users.
Trying to read that as meaning that there have been 100,000 instances of vandalism is completely misleading.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
One of the blog post authors is Steve Coast from Microsoft Bing Maps. Plus, the OSMF is claiming this post is a personal communication and does not represent the position of their board. So, the whole thing is starting to sound very suspicious.
In other words it could have been.
An honest mistake.
Of course what really bugs me about all of this is that when people talke about the 3 strikes law I hear people say time and time again... IP addresses are not identity.
IP addresses can be spoofed as can mac addresses.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Note –Steve Coast founded OpenStreetMap.