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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.
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 :(
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.
. I have no sympathy for him killing himself.
Come on, you can still have sympathy for people even if they were stupid. Man, I know some drunk homeless guys on the street, who I have sympathy for, even though it's entirely their fault where they are.
When someone is in a bad situation, it's ok to have sympathy for them, even if it's their own fault.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You have no idea about depression and suicide. So you look like an ignorant asshole
These situations aren't the same, but I do have Sympathy for Aaron.
Sadly, asswipe like you are still around who have no clue what depression is like, or what goes on leading up to suicide. Hint: It's not what you think.
Not that it keeps you from spouting your crap.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
Google was collecting random, unencrypted, broadcast data as they plotted wi-fi access point coordinates for building a geolocation database. There was no intent to collect passwords or any other sensitive information, and intent is a huge component of criminality. So yes, this submission is a pretty massive troll. Google was eavesdropping at a party and possibly writing down more than they should have been, and Swartz was tapping phone lines during private conversations and recording all the audio with intent to distribute. Not even remotely close, unless one is blinded by troll-dom. But alas, this is slashdot, so every article must include a "sigh, if only Aaron were alive to see this..."
Anon because you trolls are a bunch of touchy little motherfuckers.
One time I was setting up a microphone to record someone giving a speech. The long (and broken) microphone cable acted like an antenna, picking up wireless signals, so I was recording local radio traffic instead of the speech I was trying to record. Note there was no radio receiver hooked up - just a long cord plugged into a recorder. You can even hear wireless transmissions sometimes by just having a coiled cord connected to headphones. The cord serves as antenna and the coiling of the cord tunes it to a particular frequency.
If you've ever recorded static, you've recorded someone's wireless transmission. That's why in 1934 it was explicitly made legal to receive anything broadcast - because we've all done it on accident. If it were illegal to receive what someone is transmitting, it would be illegal to connect a long cord to headphones, because that will pick up "static", which is someone's transmission (your neighbor's wifi sounds like an intermittent buzzing). So it was perfectly legal for Google to receive wifi simply because it's unavoidable. Using an answering machine according to the instructions can record your neighbor's wifi as buzzing - the telephone wiring is the antenna.
Note that the long established law does NOT allow you to DECRYPT an encrypted transmission once you receive it. That would be "circumventing technical measures" under DMCA etc. In 2001, an attempt was made to make it illegal to DISCLOSE the content of certain transmissions. Last I heard, that was being challenged at the Supreme Court.