Slashdot Mirror
Google's Punishment? Lecture Those They Snooped On
theodp writes "When Aaron Swartz tapped into MIT's network and scooped up data from one non-profit company, the U.S. Attorney threatened him with 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. So what kind of jail time did 38 Attorneys General threaten Google with for using its Street View cars to scoop up passwords, e-mail and other personal information by tapping into the networks of their states' unsuspecting citizens? None. In agreeing to settle the case, the NY Times reports, Google is required to police its own employees on privacy issues, lecture the public on how to fend off privacy violations like the one Google perpetrated, and forfeit about 20% of one day's net income. Given the chance, one imagines that Aaron Swartz would have happily jumped at a comparable deal."
The fine being $7 million. At least EPIC isn't as cynical and thinks the outcome was positive.
I'm going to submit this submission for the best example of 'comparing apples to oranges'.
I'll assume the submitter knew nothing about the Google situation in this case, or should I think it's just a bad troll?
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
you shouldn't have any expectations of privacy.
Oh god! This is a terrible post. It's like comparing apples and oranges. These are two totally different cases... Slashdot, you are quickly becoming the worst tech news site on the Internet :(
Google's "punishment" seems to me to be about right for the seriousness of the "crime". Swartz's was not. In fact, the penalty Swartz was threatened with was the actual result of "lobbying fees and campaign contributions" (by the MAFIAA and its ilk).
Sigh. Google didn't "tap into the networks". They simply recorded packets being broadcast from open wifi points, for the purpose of logging the SIDs. A side-effect of recording the packets was that if they happened to contain fragments of plaint-text communication, they could in theory have logged passwords etc. This was the fault of the developer who had been tasked with writing software to log SIDs. When Google realised that more than that had been logged, they themselves reported it to the authorities.
Bad analogy time: a national birdwatching society has a project to record birdsong in the urban streets of the country. They also end up recording the "private" arguments of couples who are shouting at each other indoors, but with the window on the street side of the house left open.
you shouldn't have any expectations of privacy.
How many unencrypted telephones are there in the world?
I am so sick of hearing how evil Google was for recording information that other people forcefully put out into public airwaves. I know there are going to be plenty of bad analogies, so let me attempt to preempt them with a good analogy. If you go through the effort of acquiring a bullhorn to communicate with other members in your household and then proceed to pollute public airwaves with your personal information using this bullhorn, you have absolutely zero expectations of privacy. It really is as simple as that. If you don't like this, then you have many options: takes 30 seconds to set up a damn password, use https connections when possible, or use a wired connection! Once you put something out there, you can't take it back, so exercise some damn personal responsibility if you hold any expectations of privacy.
Here is a couple of further examples. HSBC almost certainly laundered terrorist money. They were fined 1.9 billion dollars. That is like 1% of market cap. OTOH, a few years ago the leaders of Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were put in jail for a long time and had to forfeit most of their money, the prosecutor saying money is the lifeblood of terrorist organization. By this logic HSBC is responsible of countless murders of US citizens, yet they get off pretty much scott free.
Allegiance to a dominant group is also beneficial. Eric Rudolph committed a terrorist act by bombing the olympics and other premeditated and unprovoked murders. He was a fugitive for five years. He was arrested, did not turn himself in. One might think he would be charged as a terrorist, but because he was a major element in the Christian Movement, he was merely give consecutive life sentence,which allows him to spew his hate of persons who do not agree with him. OTOH, on of the beltway snipers who were not so politically motivated and were not kept hidden and supported by the Christian terrorist movement, were put to death.
Powerful friends, and good lawyers, will tend to minimize the consequences of your actions.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black