Google Audits Street View Data Systems 229
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the we-meant-to-do-that dept.
from the we-meant-to-do-that dept.
schliz writes "Google's plans to upgrade to high-definition Street View in Australia are on hold until it completes a rigorous internal audit of the processes, it announced today. The company is currently being investigated by international regulators about possible privacy breaches when it became known that its Street View vehicles were capturing not only publicly available SSIDs and MAC addresses, but also samples of payload data transmitted over these networks."
this is gonna be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm really looking forward to the comments. When BP lets the oil spill continue day after day, the /. crowd goes asking why we let them handle it at all, after all they're the ones responsible for the mess.
Now Google has a mess, and is doing an internal audit. I'm curious if we will apply the same reasoning, or a different standard. And what justifications we'll see for it.
Publicly available payload data. (Score:2, Interesting)
"not only publicly available SSIDs and MAC addresses, but also samples of **publicly available** payload data transmitted over these networks"
There, fixed it for ya. At least half of the responsibility lies with those owning unsecured networks. If you don't want your data public, learn to secure it. Google is still at fault for breaking a public promise, mind you. However, the news stories seem to miss the crucial piece of information: _anybody_ can listen to these packets (and chances are many people do). However, it's digital data, and that means it's evil to listen to it. Hmm.
But why? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've yet to see anyone accusing Google of lying about this explain why they would want to get this data?
It's hard for me to think of anything more useless than tiny random snippets of unidentifiable wifi traffic from German roads. What do the conspiracy theorists think Google is using it for? What would be a possible business plan to monetize it?