FCC Wants To Fine Google $25K For WiFi Investigation

An anonymous reader writes "It's good and bad news for Google. The FCC has ruled that Google did nothing wrong when it accidentally collected WiFi data with its Street View cars: '[The FCC] concluded that there was no precedent for the commissions' enforcement of the law in connection with WiFi networks. The FCC also noted that, according to the available evidence, Google only collected data from unencrypted WiFi networks, not encrypted ones, and that it never accessed or used the data.' However, they want to fine the company $25,000 because it 'deliberately impeded and delayed the investigation.'"

Comments

Also known as

[bobwrit]

"Hey, our budget could very well get cut soon. Let's fine people for things!" That's what I suspect the FCC's reasoning is. They just wont admit it.

Re:Also known as

[Nidi62]

Well, you know, seeing as how impeding an official investigation is actually something you can be charged and convicted of in a criminal investigation, it seems only fair that it should be a finable offense in an investigation such as this.

Re:Also known as

[Trepidity]

Given that the FCC's budget is somewhere around $350 million, levying fines of $0.025 million doesn't seem like a plausible funding strategy. That's just noise to both the FCC and Google's budgets. Imo it's more likely that it's just a symbolic fine.

Re:Also known as

[Anonymous Coward]

You can delay the proceedings by not providing information in a timely manner.

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[Anarchduke]

Actually, I think this is a violation of Google's 5th amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. I know that we've never applied the 5th amendment to corporations before, but if you think about the Citizen's United ruling, the Supreme Court has already said that corporations are people and enjoy 1st amendment rights. Why couldn't they enjoy 5th amendment rights as well?
In fact, I would enjoy seeing a corporation take a case like this to the Supreme Court and say, "I am legally a person and so the blah blah blah law shouldn't apply to me because it is a violation of my Nth amendment rights as a person.

Re:Also known as

[divide overflow]

how can you impede something that you are innocent of ?

Isn't that the equivalent of saying - "I did not do it" and continuing to protest such ?

No, because the delay was separate from their declaration of innocence. They impeded the government's investigation by not providing the court subpoenaed information relevant to the investigation in a timely manner. When investigations go on longer than necessary it increases the workload for the investigators and their assistants and results in increased the costs to the taxpayer.

Re:Also known as

[divide overflow]

"Hey, our budget could very well get cut soon. Let's fine people for things!" That's what I suspect the FCC's reasoning is. They just wont admit it.

That makes no sense. $25k is nothing to either Google OR the FCC and wouldn't impress any legislator responsible for approving FCC budgets. The fines probably go into some general government pool that wouldn't affect their resources.

What makes more sense is the FCC did this to give other corporations the message that they need to come clean about what they've done and not drag their feet providing subpoenaed information.

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[JoeMerchant]

Jeez, when I want to get to work a little faster, I'm risking a fine that's equivalent to several hours of pay, and I only get paid 2000 hours a year... Google gives federal investigators a hard time and they only propose to fine them about 3 seconds of gross profit?

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[sribe]

Well, yes, but. What did google do to "impede" the investigation??? What I recall is that google resisted handing over other people's information to a federal agency that was claiming that collecting that information was a privacy breach--in other words, google was trying to mitigate the damage, if any, done to people, based on the theory that if it really was a privacy breach to collect the information, it would be more of a privacy breach to disseminate it. I seem to recall google offering to answer lots of questions about the type of info, but only resisting turning it over en masse.

Let's face it: "hey collecting that data was a huge privacy breach, now hand it over to us" is really not a reasonable stance ;-)

Re:Also known as

[cgenman]

It seems like the sort of fine that would get on the record that Google was being uncooperative. In the future, the FCC can use this to convince judges of larger fines or stronger enforcement provisions to convince Google to live up to its data release requirements.

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[million_monkeys]

In fact, I would enjoy seeing a corporation take a case like this to the Supreme Court and say, "I am legally a person and so the blah blah blah law shouldn't apply to me because it is a violation of my Nth amendment rights as a person.

Great...another opportunity for the Supreme Court to FURTHER expand on the insanity of the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision. Like my mom says: "We need that like a hole in the head."

Without context, I don't know how to interpret that quote. Does your mom suffer from intercranial bleeding? Because in that case, a hole in the head might save her life.

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[symbolset]

It's 25 grand. It sends a message that they're petty and insecure. Google should fight it up to $25K worth of government lawyers time to be equally petty.

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[mysidia]

When investigations go on longer than necessary it increases the workload for the investigators and their assistants and results in increased the costs to the taxpayer.

It seems they requested information that took Google a few months to produce. Google did not provide emails that the FCC requested or identify the engineer who authorized the data collection

It doesn't seem that apparent that Google was attempting to delay the investigation. If the FCC requests a company produce all e-mails that meet a certain criteria, that can be a huge burden for IT that may inherently take many man hours, and they have to be certain that what is produced is complete, before sending anything -- or be at risk of being accused of attempting to conceal or failing to comply with the order to produce.

As for reporting on 'which engineer authorized the data collection'; that may be a rather complicated matter as well -- the various entities involved need to complete their finger pointing and internal investigations and review of internal records to figure out who actually did what.
That would be even more complicated if no engineer specifically authorized the data collection, but hey...

A 2 or 3 month delay begins to sound quite plausible, and not unreasonable. It could very well be innocent ineptitude, poor management, or inefficiency in doing the work to satisfy unusual requests, to draw matters out further, it's not necessary to conclude malice.

Without specific evidence of intentional delay, there's no basis for a fine.

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[icebike]

You can delay the proceedings by not providing information in a timely manner.

The FCC can also get a subpoena instead of asking Google to voluntarily throw an employee under the bus.

Re:Also known as

[Anonymus]

But then what's the point of being rich if it doesn't mean that you're above the law?

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[shentino]

Depends on whether you are more afraid of telepathy or hypnosis.

Google's excuse is a bit weak...

[dryriver]

When queried by multiple governments (incl. France) why Google's Streetview Cars seem to drive around cities collecting all sorts of private data on people's personal/home Wifi setups (like username:password), Google's apparent explanation/excuse was that the collection of Wifi data was "completely accidental", and a "the result of a mistake made by one engineer". The story then gets all weird, because Google refused to hand over requested internal emails to aid the investigation, and also refused to give up the name of the "one engineer" who supposedly "OK'd the Wifi sniffing". The real story seems to be that Google once again "went way too far" in trying to collect "useful data", then made up a seriously silly excuse about some engineer making a "mistake", and personal Wifi data being collected as a result. (How on earth does a "mistake" enable a StreetView Car to suddenly collect detailed Wifi hotspot data? Wouldn't the car need to be purposely equipped with software and antennas capable of this, and also explicitly configured to do so?)

Re:Google's excuse is a bit weak...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a quite understandable mistake: "Gee, sending these cars around is expensive. We just want MAC info for geolocation, but what if we screw something up? If we have to revisit an area I'll get yelled at...best to just log everything and filter it out later"

Re:Google's excuse is a bit weak...

[Anonymous Coward]

How on earth does a "mistake" enable a StreetView Car to suddenly collect detailed Wifi hotspot data? Wouldn't the car need to be purposely equipped with software and antennas capable of this, and also explicitly configured to do so?

The car was already equipped with software and antennas, apparently for building a database of open Wifi hotspots. This was not the problem. It was the accidental collection of payload, in particular, unencrypted payload, which was the mistake (and the problem.)

Re:Google's excuse is a bit weak...

[cgenman]

Wifi sniffing is what you have to do to get Mac Addresses and SSID's for Geolocation, as well as any sort of WiFi related work these days (Thanks, Dumb Bastards who turn off SSID broadcast!). At core, that's all Google was collecting, a basic WiFi sniff. I have to do it all the time if I want to figure out what jerk is invisibly camping the section of spectrum I'm using. And in classic Google fashion, they probably figured they could sort through and filter out the data they needed back at Google Central, rather than doing it in-car.

Honestly, the most shocking thing is the public's ignorance of the technology they use every day.

Re:Google's excuse is a bit weak...

[slimjim8094]

Even better than that, traffic logging is on by default in Kismet, the software they were using. It's more like they forgot to switch the option off.