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Call For DOJ To Reopen Google Wi-Fi Spying Investigation
angry tapir writes "Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries. Representatives Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, called on the DOJ to fully investigate Google's actions for potential violations of federal wiretapping laws. In light of a recently released U.S. Federal Communications Commission report on Wi-Fi snooping by Google Street View cars, the DOJ should take a new look at the company's actions, wrote the lawmakers in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder."
The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, commits more heinous violations of life, liberty and property every 6 months than Google has in its entire lifetime so far. Cry me a fucking river over the open wifi connections. Turn your attention to the President who claims the power to assassinate Americans abroad, who continues most of the War on Terror policies and whose Attorney General is such a contemptible scumbag that he sacrificed hundreds of Mexican civilians' lives to influence domestic gun policy (a move so cynical, you almost can't even see the average neocon supporting something like it).
While they're at it why don't they go after their colleagues for trying to push laws that circumvent current wiretapping laws?
Nothing to see here, nothing of note was taken, claims it was a seriuous attempt to intrude on anybody are laughable and most journalists writing on this subject are technically illiterate and working to a script.
A commercially derived attack from paid-for representatives of Googles opposition. If this is the best they can come up with after millions of dollars paid funding groups set up as sockpuppet attack dogs then I'm happy to define Google as safe.
Yawn.
(PS: I'm more concerned about why they are kept under such universal pressure from the MIC, presumably it's to force them to allow the Military/Right to snoop on Google's commercial, worryingly broad, data.)
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Clearly, we have a couple of very concerned congressmen here. Concerned that they didn't receive their payoff checks.
The only difference between what Google did and what every other PC in existence does with a WiFi radio in it is store it somewhere other than memory.
Just like it isn't wiretapping to record someone having a conversation standing on the street, I fail to see how its wiretapping to intercept an unencrypted BROADCAST signal.
Am I violating wiretapping laws because I use an antenna to pick up ATSC broadcasts? Not really much different other than the TV station is smart enough to realize broadcast intentionally and nobody has bothered to tell most ignorant home users what WiFi actually does or how it works (i.e. the signal doesn't stop at some imaginary boundary or at the walls of your house.
The fact that it keeps coming up with politicians shows we need to stop electing 90 year old lawyers who don't have the slightest idea what they're talking about.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I hate google as much as anybody, and do not use their search engine because of their privacy-invading policies. I also do not run their tracking crap that's all around the internet, and recommend that NO ONE use them for these reasons: they are destroying the last shred of privacy that was left on the internet.
But the entire PURPOSE of 802.11 used without encryption is to allow random unknown devices to connect, listen, and send. It's designed for that reason. It provides multiple methods for encryption if you want to use it for semi-private communication. If people had so much as ROT13'ed their packets, I'd fully side with them if google broke the ROT13.
But do we REALLY want to live in a world where using computer and communication technology *as designed* is illegal? That's the very kind of muddled legal thinking that makes people say, "linking to illegal content is the same as hosting illegal content". Because make no mistakes, if we allow this to happen to companies we don't like, it WILL be used against us too.
Do not measure these things by how emotionally satisfying they are. Measure them by the harm they will do (will, not can!) when they are misapplied in other ways in the future. When the government wants to lock down the internet even more, and makes it illegal for the common person to do some simple thing that computers have been doing for decades.
Be careful what you wish for. You want to see google die? Me too. So let's all stop using them.
They got a snapshot of someone's open wireless...it's like taking a picture with your garage door open then you complaining that I took a picture of you with your garage door open.
...Or like complaining that Google's Street View cameras caught you paying for hookers?
We were just talking, I swear!!!
...Or like complaining that Google's Street View cameras caught you paying for hookers?
Or, if you're in the Secret Service, not paying for hookers...
I'm going to remember that name this November so that I make sure not to press any boxes next to it.
If they're so interested in pursuing this, then they should personally finance it, instead of wasting more tax revenue on another insignificant investigation.
Why can't lawmakers spend a little time on the real source of the problem - go after the Wifi vendors that have made it easy to accidentally broadcast all of your communications in the clear (or with nearly useless WEP encryption). And for websites that allow you to send passwords and other sensitive information in plaintext.
The problem isn't what Google will do with that data, but is what someone else may do with it as he sits outside your house, collecting passwords and account numbers culled from your emails.
This is garbage. We have bigger problems going on in this country and they want to waste time with this topic?
This ticks me off to no end. Frank Pallone Jr. and John Barrow should be voted out of office for wasting taxpayer money
beating this dead horse. How about working on getting this country out of debt without printing more cash first!
I hear the Secret Service is considering switching to Eunuchs.
People go out of their way to set up unencrypted wifi, in order to more widely share and broadcast things to anyone and everyone who happened to be in the area. Then when someone passively payed attention to it, suddenly the listener was in trouble. If a crime happened, let's all hope that the Wifi AP operators are punished at least as much as Google, because they were more complicit. It couldn't have happened without their aggressive act of the broadcasting. Futhermore, since lack of encryption proves they had no intent to keep the information private (in addition to it effectively not being privact), we should view that as intent to trap listeners.
This is like if every door came with a good lock, and you removed the lock from your door, put it on the front of your house, and then broadcast it to the world (remember, we're talking about actual active broadcast tech here) with a sign saying "Come on in." Then among the dozens strangers that came in, you single one out a few months after he's left and say he intruded. I hope the system lets the "intruder" go and prosecute you for something.
We are never going to have privacy if we don't take it seriously. Taking it seriously means having a clear idea of when people are trying to be private (and then using the readily-available means to make it be private) and when they're not trying. Furthermore, we have the tech for those who seek privacy, to actually have it. Today's systems heavily weigh in favor of the user and against the cryptanalyst. People who hold back privacy by abstaining from using 1977-or-later tech ought to be shunned and mocked as much as possible, and We The People should work toward making sure the law never goes their way. The people going after Google in this case, are the enemies of privacy. Become a friend of privacy and join Google on this, as ironic as it may seem to ignorant laypeople. You are a techie and therefore understand what actually happened between the AP and the Google van, right, or else you wouldn't be here on Slashdot.
The government doesn't like it when others infringe on its territory. I'd be much more impressed if the US gov took as much interest in its own illegal snooping.
Does that explain why conservatives are calling for Holder's head, and why liberals have been running interference for him?
Killing Americans who are fighting for the other side during armed conflict has precedent at least back to WWII. Unless you surrender, you are fair game for being killed by whatever method we deem appropriate.
And those were real Americans. Al-Awlaki was born in the US by Yemeni student parents, and if we had sane laws that wouldn't grant citizenship. Then for the rest of his life he identified as a Yemeni citizen, even coming back to the US briefly to study on a foreign student visa from Yemen.
Seriously, what does anything in your post have to do with investigating Google? Because you don't like some actions of the Obama administration, that means Google should never be investigated? Or what?
Your post is basically just a big, populist distraction intended to get a +5 and get people angry about someone other than Google.
A commercially derived attack from paid-for representatives of Googles opposition. If this is the best they can come up with after millions of dollars paid funding groups set up as sockpuppet attack dogs then I'm happy to define Google as safe.
Prove a single word of these statements. Otherwise, you're the one acting like a paid sockpuppet--paid by Google to defend them on Slashdot. Notice that the post above yours is talking about pushing wiretapping laws, and the one above that is angrily attacking the Obama administration for other random things that have nothing to do with Google. The pro-Google astroturfing on Slashdot has reached a fever pitch, and notice that every one of these posts gets an instant +5. It's almost as if there's a coordinated effort to attack elements in the government that might challenge Google.
Even more bizarre is how, if this was Microsoft, opinions on Slashdot would be totally different--because they were different during the Microsoft-DOJ antitrust trial circa 2000, and you can go back and read the comments to see that Slashdot had an anti-corporate viewpoint back then. Now that it's Google, they have an anti-government viewpoint. Hmm...
Each time I see another one of these weird obsessive lawmakers beating a dead horse things it reinforces my impression that Microsoft has not changed at all and is once again up to its old tricks. Maybe its just me.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Google cars were all on public roadways. If it's not encrypted, you don't own it once you broadcast it. The only legally interesting part of this is to figure out how screwed up the legal system is in this area: if you're standing on public property but look in through the window of a private house and see a naked woman, you're a peeping tom. If you look in and see a naked man, he's an exhibitionist.
I don't know if I'm the only one, but I personally think the USDOJ's time would be much better spent investigating the stock portfolios of
Representatives Frank Pallone Jr., and John Barrow, for shorts on Google's stock.
Old habits die hard.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0404/Obama-signs-STOCK-Act-banning-insider-trading-by-members-of-Congress-video