Germany Fines Google Over Street View - But Says €145k Is Too Small

judgecorp writes "Germany's privacy regulator has fined Google €145,000 over its Street View cars' harvesting of private data — but the official has complained that the size of the fine is too small, because of limits to the fines regulators can impose. German data protection commissioner Johannes Caspar said the fine was too low, for 'one of the largest known data breachers ever,' saying, 'as long as privacy violations can be punished only at discount prices, enforcement of data protection law in the digital world with its high abuse potential is hardly possible.' In 2010 it emerged that Google's Street View cars captured personal data from Wi-Fi networks as well as taking pictures — since then regulators have imposed a series of fines — the largest being $7 million reportedly paid to settle a U.S. government probe."

Comments

They need to shut up and get over it.

[Anonymous Coward]

By making that silly mistake Google opened the door to the whole line of Scroogled commercials and other FUD based attacks by their rivals.

The market is correcting this mistake and "imposing harsher fines" is just more ammunition for them to use on some dumb kid whose trying to sniff dirty pictures from other people's wifi connections.

Why?

[Frosty Piss]

How is it a "data breach" â" or at least how is such a "breach" Google's issue when it's on the user's side? How can it be illegal to acquire signals "floating freely" through the air? Did Google "crack" anythingâ? Use any "back doors"? I'm sure we'll see a lot of "unlocked door" analogies and perhaps a "car analogy" or two, but this is a "left a Euro on the sidewalk" type deal here...

I know, Google is the new boogieman after Apple and Microsoft...

Re:Why?

[imbusy]

Using the same logic your mobile phone call data can be acquired freely to listen to your calls just because it's floating through the air. Why would that be a breach of privacy?

Re:Why?

[5KVGhost]

Using your same logic, your conversation with your friend across the room can be heard by any random person passing nearby, just because it's floating through the air. Why would that be a breach of privacy?

It would not be. And neither is intercepting unencrypted wifi traffic. Because you've deliberately chosen a means of communication which you know can be easily overheard.

This case is just an example of self-serving bureaucratic pandering. It makes just as much sense as the government demanding that everyone wear earplugs in public lest we overhear "private" information being shouted from the rooftops.

Fines

[fredprado]

That is a generic problem with fines and big corporations, not only something related with privacy issues. As long as fines are applied at absolute values corporations will only laugh at them and keep doing what they want. Fines should be applied at amounts proportionally to a company's value.

I Still Don't Get It

[StoneyMahoney]

Every article I see about this always wails about Google's capture of personal data from wifi networks. Are they cracking the encryption? No? So why is it their fault if people are sending their data over unencrypted links? If people don't want their data read by strangers, they shouldn't be broadcasting it into the street in the clear! I wish someone would force Google to delete all the data they took. Instantly Google Street View would cease to function, as would the Wifi triangulation location system that so many people probably don't realise they use. I bet there would be a far bigger outcry over that than the original "privacy" issues ever raised.

I'm not sure I entirely sympathise with the photo privacy issue either. They haven't put online anything I couldn't have seen myself by standing on top of a car. Or a wheelie bin. Or a bench. Or a phone box. Or a post box. We seem to have very strange ideas of what "privacy" really entails.

Re:I Still Don't Get It

[LordLimecat]

The problem is that, IIRC, Google was essentially driving around with a wifi adapter set to "sniff" in order to gather SSID beacons, to compile a geolocation-by-SSID database. In the process, they also grabbed a bunch of unencrypted data.

Its essentially as if they had driven around New York with an off-the-shelf recorder grabbing "sounds of the city" for some research project, and managed to pick up a bunch of people discussing their social security number on their cellphones. Technically youre not supposed to do that, but the problem is that people were discussing sensitive details in public.

Google definately should have taken better precautions, but this isnt them being bad guys (what on earth do they want with random people's network captures? Problems of of "too much noise", "not useful", and "its illegal, to boot" apply here); its an issue of simply not thinking things through. I cant imagine what motivation people are assuming Google might have had when they assume this was an intentional action of an evil corporation; do you suppose Google has infrastructure set up to analyze and use illicit network dumps to somehow generate ad revenue?