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Report Finds Google Supervisors Knew About Wi-Fi Data Harvesting
bonch writes "According to the FCC report, Google's collection of Street View data was not the unauthorized act of a rogue engineer, as Google had portrayed it, but an authorized program known to supervisors and at least seven other engineers. The original proposal contradicts Google's claim that there was no intent to gather payload data: 'We are logging user traffic along with sufficient data to precisely triangulate their position at a given time, along with information about what they were doing.'"
Is there a source to what is claimed in the article? I followed the links and find nothing to substantiate. Even the NYTimes links just references their own articles.
I'm not really sure whats so "evil" about this. Google was simply doing what anyone else could with a computer running Wireshark could do. This would be evil if Google:
1) Collaborated with the government to alert the government about potential "illegal" activities being conducted
Or
2) Made attempts to crack wi-fi encryption
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It confirms no such thing. In fact the entire summary is out of touch with what was in the FCC report.
The entire thing is on line, you can read it for yourself. The FCC dropped the whole thing because there is no clear evidence that google violated any law.
GO READ THE FCC REPORT YOURSELF
instead of relying on a biased hack at the NYT to put their own spin on it.
There was never any intent do use this data, it was merely one engineer's pipe dream to do so.
And the fact that he MUCH LATER circulated memos that stated he was capturing freely available encrypted traffic to 7 people
does not mean they were actually aware of precisely what that meant.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If you're talking about using encryption rather than broadcasting everything you do to everyone on your block, I disagree. You can, and you should.
Sorry, this is really a non issue for me. Google went around and did the equivalent of listening while people shouted from their rooftops. If you don't want people knowing what you're saying, don't shout it from your rooftop. The same goes for spewing unencrypted traffic across your neighborhood.
Let's sum up the whole thing, "Google had not violated any laws". That's straight from the article and the FCC investigation report. Not one single law was broken, PERIOD. So how is this news? If the NYT really wants to do news about privacy rights why doesn't it put the bullshit CISPA on the front page instead of ignoring it.
Full underacted text (other than the name of Engineer Doe, is available here.
It was clearly a tiny project that got little oversight, and less review. For the NYT to say it was "approved" is quite beyond the facts. Collecting wifi access point locations was approved. But Engineer Doe went off the reservation and did way more than that.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Consider what you're saying. It's like condoning someone who breaks
Wrong. There were no locks for them to break
and enters
Wrong. People were transmitting their information into the street, Google didn't have to enter anything
Want to try again with another analogy?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
in the UK at least, they're already criminals (section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 makes it an offence to gather any data howsoever if unauthorised).
So if I post a blog in the UK for everyone to see, but I don't explicitly authorize anyone to view it (the authorization is just implicit), then the Googlebot would be committing a crime by going through it and indexing it? Is that what you're saying?
They spent a year and tens of thousands of dollars "investigating" Google and couldn't find any violations of the law, so the make a bogus claim that Google "didn't cooperate". Why should Google? What the Feds wanted was for Google to unilaterally admit to some crime.
Those who claim Google was "stealing data" have no clue as to how wifi's work and what it takes to collect data with a "Street View" van. Mostly they are victims of Apple's and Microsoft's anti-Google FUD campaign, since they both collect the same kinds of data.
Most wifis have a radius range of about 300 feet. Traveling at 25mph a van can pass through 600 feet in about 16 seconds. It takes several minutes to crack a WEP and even more for a WPA encrypted connection. The van won't have enough time to crack into secured access points. That leaves OPEN access points. How many packets could a van collect in 16 seconds for an 11Mb/S connection? About 10,600. A typical 1500 byte packet has a maximum of 842 bytes of payload, which would total to about 9 MB of data. That "data" will be HTML code, web page elements, LOTS of graphics and tons of trivia. It *might" contain pieces of someone's email. All from Joe and Sally Sixpack who don't have enough sense to, in affect, close their blinds when they undress for bed at night, or shout all of their telephone conversations, or leave their cars and houses unlocked and the windows down or open. So, what are folks to do when they pass by, plug their ears and close their eyes for 600 feet?
Besides, ESSIDs can and often do change without notice, so they mean nothing. MAC addresses would identify hardware and Google could connect a MAC to an IP address, but gathering that information is not illegal. Besides, names, telephone numbers and house addresses have been linked together in phone books for a100 years. I can record your license plate number and look up your name and address in our state auto registration database after paying a registration fee of $50. Ditto for your house records: year it was built, how many times it was sold and for how much, the amount of taxes you payed and what is due, even a floor plan.
IF you don't want someone eaves dropping in on your wifi traffic then use WPA and/or encrypt your email and connect only with https websites.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
No, that's not remotely what I'm saying, and your Matthew Shepard comparison is wildly off base.
If you have unencrypted WiFi, you are broadcasting, quite literally, whatever you're doing. All I'm saying is if you're out in public, people can take your picture. You might not like it, but they can. If you yell at your wife on the front porch or in the house if you're loud enough, the neighbors can hear you. I'm not saying you need to encrypt everything, or that you need a vault. I'm saying don't broadcast to the world if you don't want the world to hear you.
I'm very much pro-privacy, but if you want your privacy (as I do), you can't put the burden on the entire rest of the world to preserve it for you. We railed against the DMCA because it criminalized circumventing even useless protection measures, but somehow when they're OUR useless protection measures, it's different? No, it's not. What I'm saying is that if you don't want your papers and personal effects gone through, don't leave them lying in the street for people to pick up and read.
Dude we know you're biased as shit. You submitted the article! Just give up and admit that you either have a clear bias or are paid by or affiliated with Microsoft, directly or indirectly.
However, the difference between Google and MS/Apple is that in MS/Apple's case it'd be a quiet settlement with no details.
With google, what happens? Straight up honesty. 100% un-redacted other than the user's names.
Disclaimer: While I did work at Keyhole(what became GoogleEarth) for 1.75 years back in 2k3, and while my older brother is Google's VP-Engineering, Geo division, I have had no significant insider knowledge or discussions about this, or anything related to it, since I left that job. I also would probably be written off as a delusional paranoid schizophrenic by many, but I'll refrain from shilling half a dozen interesting tidbits about myself here. Anyway, my comment is this:
"This would be evil if Google:
1) Collaborated with the government to alert the government about potential "illegal" activities being conducted"
Now, I will mention that it is public knowledge that the CIA through it's venture capital investment arm 'In-Q-Tel' did more or less save Keyhole from going under during the hard times of 2003ish, a year or two before they were acquired by google.
I honestly can't see how people, even the author of the parent comment, can ignore that angle of the parent comment. Do you really, in any universe after the last decade, think the CIA wouldn't start scratching their heads regarding the possibilities of a dragnet of roving signals intelligence vehicles canvasing the nation, neigh, the world?? I mean, Really??. Do you really think that if they had done something illegal, or debatably unconstitutional on that scale, that they couldn't succeed in getting it brushed under the rug, under the cover that it was just a couple silly engineers stretching some bounds? Really? If so, enjoy your lack of paranoia. Ignorance is bliss.
-dmc