Google Avoids Fine Over Street View WiFi Snooping, Ordered To Delete Data

DW100 writes "Google has avoided a fine from the UK's data protection watchdog over its admission that it had failed to delete all Wi-Fi data from its Street View cars last year — but it must ensure it is deleted within 35 days or face a contempt of court action. 'Its investigation into Google reopened last year after further revelations about the data taken from wi-fi networks. During that inquiry, additional discs containing private data were found.Google had previously pledged to destroy all data it had collected, but admitted last year that it had "accidentally" retained the additional discs. ... [The ICO said], "The detriment caused to individuals by this breach fails to meet the level required to issue a monetary penalty."'"

Comments

Ballmer will be pissed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stand by to dodge those chairs boys, this will get hairy!

Detriment caused

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

From the BBC News article:

The FCC levelled heavy criticism at the company, saying it had "deliberately impeded and delayed" the investigation for months.

Its investigation found that data had been discovered in 30 countries, and included "complete email messages, email headings, instant messages and their content, logging-in credentials, medical listings and legal infractions, information in relation to online dating and visits to pornographic sites".

Assuming the UK was among those countries, if that list of privacy invasions is not sufficient to merit even a token fine from a privacy watchdog, I'm not sure what is. :-(

Re:Detriment caused

[msauve]

"list of privacy invasions"

You do realize this was WiFi, so that the collected "private" data was being broadcast in the clear, right? There's a reasonable expectation of privacy if you bother to encrypt your WiFi, but running it wide open?

If you send radio signals off your property, they should be "fair game" for anyone who can receive them.

Re:Detriment caused

[msauve]

No, it's more like standing naked by your front window, then complaining because someone takes a picture from the street. Setting up minimal WiFi encryption on consumer wireless equipment has never been a task requiring a "capable expert."

Re:Detriment caused

[Qwavel]

No, it said that they weren't fined for this latest chapter (the failure to delete). They have been forced to pay enumerable fines and settle even more class action lawsuits. When you break the law in almost every country in the world, you pay, so people should stop pretending that they just got a slap on the wrist.

You have grabbed the most sensational clips you could find (the data involved was random, so yes, it included anything you can think of), that is actually about a different chapter of this saga (this is about the failure to delete).

Most importantly, you left out the part that distinguishes this from other privacy invasions. None of that data was ever made public. No one has ever established that Google even intended to collect the data. No one has even come up with a plausible use for these random chunks of data. I've seen it written that Google themselves blew the whistle on this issue, but I don't know that for a fact myself (the origins of its discovery are missing details).

So, really you are just muck-raking, and in a rather misleading way.

Re:Detriment caused

[Bill_the_Engineer]

And taking said picture violates the naked person's expectation of privacy. Of course, Arne Svenson will put that to the test with his "Neighbors" exhibit at Chelsea gallery. Interestingly, your assertion associates Svenson to photography like google is to wifi..

Re:Detriment caused

[msauve]

I suspect that Google was simply working to enhance their location services by mapping Access Point MAC addresses to GPS locations. The simple way to do that is to drive around, collecting and location stamping packets, then process that data later. Nothing nefarious involved, and Google was upfront when they realized that some people were too stupid to set up encryption (or simply didn't care about their privacy). If they'd set up a pcap which grabbed only the headers, there would have been no issue.

Re:Detriment caused

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Setting up minimal WiFi encryption on consumer wireless equipment has never been a task requiring a "capable expert."

Surely you can't really believe that? There are many, many people who use the Internet at home and don't even realise that they have "WiFi". They wouldn't know WEP from WPA if you spelled them out in inch-high letters. It is not at all obvious to such a person that observing what they are doing on a computer inside their home from the street outside is even possible, and certainly not obvious what they should do about it.

Try looking at it this way. By your logic, because it is obvious to me as someone knowledgeable about computer networks that WEP is not an effective means of encryption for wireless traffic, anyone using WEP therefore has no reasonable expectation of privacy because they could have searched for two minutes on Google and discovered this but they still haven't protected themselves better. It should therefore be fair and legal for me to watch whatever is happening on four (as I write this) of my neighbours' wireless connections without any regard for their privacy. Does that sound right to you?

What about the fact that although WPA has been presented as being an actual encryption standard, it was cracked long ago, so I could download a tool to break it and be watching another five (as I write this) neighbours' wireless connections five minutes from now? These are people who might have actively chosen to encrypt their traffic, but they also didn't do the two minute Google search, so have their forfeited all right to privacy as well in your eyes?

Incidentally, taking a picture of someone naked inside their home from the street outside could also be illegal in the UK depending on the circumstances. Voyeurism is an offence, for example.

Re:Detriment caused

[msauve]

Decoding a WEP transmission requires a directed effort specific to each WLAN encountered.

We apparently just have different beliefs. I don't think it's the government's role to protect people from their own stupidity. Stupidity should be painful, especially if you can't be bothered to RTFM.

Re:So unfair

[Saethan]

Hate to break it to you, but lots of people do this. Just go wardriving with a packet analyzer.

Horse shit

[fnj]

So people are running UNSECURED wi-fi? That's fine, I personally don't see anything wrong with that so far.

And people are concerned and upset that their wi-fi is noted in a database? I can see why they might be ... however ...

But the same person is running UNSECURED wi-fi AND at the same time is concerned and upset that their wi-fi is noted in a database? That's horse shit. That is real stupidity.

Re:Interesting how many times Google gets away...

[mystikkman]

Here are two other mighty convenient examples where Google made "innocent" mistakes by vacuuming more data to track users intrusively and show them ads. Not sure if they're evil or just incompetent.

Here's an example of them being *both* very competent and evil.

Removing borders and decreasing contrast between ads and results to get more clicks and more money from advertisers and users, especially older people who can't see contrast well. I am sure they employ professional psychologists with PhDs whose sole objective is to increase ad clicks by using A/B testing, even if they user didn't intend to click ads, they must be making billions off these "optimizations".

http://ppcblog.com/fbf0fa-now-you-see-it

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/31/is-google-intentionally-trying-to-minimize-the-fact-that-these-are-ads/

Unlike Microsoft, they do have amazing PR though, with making lots of people believe the all the 'do no evil' BS, while slowly taking over the browser market by beating Mozilla to save money on ads.