Judge OKs Wiretap Lawsuit Over Google Wi-Fi Sniffing

An anonymous reader writes "Last year Google found itself in hot water after admitting to accidentally collecting payload data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Their admission led to a number of investigations and complaints around the globe, and a U.S. District Court Judge has now denied Google's motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit which alleges the search giant violated federal wiretapping laws. 'Judge James Ware drew a distinction in yesterday's ruling between merely accessing an open WiFi network and actually sniffing the individual packets on that network. In the first case, one is only jumping onto a network to send and receives one own communications; in the second case, one is looking into someone else's communications, and doing so in a way that requires nontrivial technical ability or software.'"