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Supreme Court Rejects Appeal By Google Over Street View Data Collection

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-collect-my-data-bro dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Supreme Court declined to throw out a class-action lawsuit against Google for sniffing Wi-Fi networks with its Street View cars. The justices left intact a federal appeals court ruling that the U.S. Wiretap Act protects the privacy of information on unencrypted in-home Wi-Fi networks. Several class-action lawsuits were filed against Google shortly after the company acknowledged that its Street View cars were accessing email, web history and other data on unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. A Google spokesman said the company was disappointed that the Supreme Court had declined to hear the case."

10 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. wut by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I suppose listening to ham radio now is a crime.

    1. Re:wut by Shakrai · · Score: 3, Informative

      Listening to cordless and cellular phone calls is indeed a crime in the United States, even though they used to be broadcast in the clear.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    2. Re:wut by AnOnyxMouseCoward · · Score: 2

      Or maybe "oh here's a door. I wonder if it's locked. Newp. Well then, I guess I better go inside, take some photos and read some of their documents. And then use that information for presumably commercial purposes. It's got to be legal and right, the door was unlocked."

    3. Re:wut by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      I suppose listening to ham radio now is a crime.

      No. The only purpose of ham radio is broadcasting publicly. The broadcaster clearly intended for you to hear his transmission.

      I think the best example would be open shades in a window. You could be walking by, seeing some people having wild sex and assume they are into voyeurism and sit down for a show. The police could come by, give you a hard time and you could say "Well I thought they wanted people to look! The shades are open!" and he'd likely let you off.

      Then along comes Google. They send drones out to film every open window in the country at once. Could that be, in any way, construed as what the people who own those homes had intended? No. They're clearly violating the privacy of a large number of people.

  2. boo hoo by danomatika · · Score: 4, Insightful

    its Street View cars were accessing email, web history and other data on unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. A Google spokesman said the company was disappointed that the Supreme Court had declined to hear the case.

    Boo hoo Google. By their logic, if I leave my door unlocked, the Google Street View car driver can stop his vehicle, open my door, and read the documents on my desk? Hey, I left my door unlocked so I was asking for it!

    1. Re:boo hoo by Calsar · · Score: 2

      I think a better analogy would be if you printing out your emails and web history and scattered the sheets of paper around your yard and the street in front of your house. Then someone driving down the road took a picture of your house and street which included the information you left laying out in the open.

    2. Re:boo hoo by choprboy · · Score: 4, Informative

      its Street View cars were accessing email, web history and other data on unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. A Google spokesman said the company was disappointed that the Supreme Court had declined to hear the case.

      Boo hoo Google. By their logic, if I leave my door unlocked, the Google Street View car driver can stop his vehicle, open my door, and read the documents on my desk? Hey, I left my door unlocked so I was asking for it!

      The summary is a BS deceptive description of what happened and your analogy is a BS comparison. Google never "open[ed] your door and read the documents". Google drove around mapping streets AND had a wireless sniffer running to capture/correlate access point beacons with location data. Access point beacons are publicly broadcast, not encypted. Google saved this captured data to a file...

      Oh, and by the way, it turns out countless morons are running unsecured public access points and transmitting their sensitive information over these public access points (user names/passwords/email/etc). Google inadvertently captured this very public data in the same stream as the public access point beacons.

      A more fitting analogy would be:
          Thousands of morons walk down the street repeatedly shouting out their user names and passwords for anyone to hear. Google happened to be driving by at the time, dictating notes into a recorder about what features are on the street, which also captured these people shouting in the background. Morons now want Google to be held liable for "wiretapping their private communications".

  3. Dollars don't vote ... by perpenso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When your democracy revolves around voting with dollars, how could anything besides this outcome have been expected?

    That is a seriously misinformed view. Dollars don't vote, people do. And a 1%'er has exactly the same vote as a 99%'er.

    Money is tool to influence voters who don't really care one way or another, nothing more. No amount of big money financed media campaigns will changes the minds of informed voters who care about a particular issue.

    Two of the most power lobbies in the U.S. are the NRA and the AARP. The power of these organization is not campaign contributions, their power comes from the fact that their member as well known for reliably showing up on election day and voting their respective issue.

    Want to change things, then educate and motivate voters. Want to support the status quo, then focus on the red herring of money.

  4. Privacy Is Your Own Responsibility by organgtool · · Score: 2

    I'm all for privacy, but it's your own responsibility to protect your privacy. If you don't want your communications broadcast to the entire neighborhood, then take the steps necessary to set up encryption on your broadcasting device. There was a time when setting up encryption was difficult, but now it is a breeze and there is simply no excuse for not doing it. The instructions on most wireless routers even highly recommend encryption, so not setting it up is willful negligence on the user's part.

  5. Re:Everyone on the underhanded snooping bandwagon? by truedfx · · Score: 4, Informative

    FTFA: "Google has admitted that its camera-equipped Street View cars inadvertently captured emails, passwords and other data from unprotected wireless networks as they drove by." The key word that should make all the difference is "inadvertently". It's up to you to choose whether you believe it (I do), but they claim they weren't looking at the private data at all, and only found out later that it had got recorded along with the data that was supposed to be recorded.