Judge OKs Wiretap Lawsuit Over Google Wi-Fi Sniffing 137
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.'"
Re:Ahhhh, I get it now (Score:3, Informative)
It's not WHAT they are doing, it's WHO is doing it that is at issue. Google is not law enforcement or government of any kind. And since they were not contracted by the government to do this and they have not collected data to offer to the government, it will not likely get a pass on this. On the other hand, if government thought for a moment that they could benefit from the information Google had collected, you can bet they would have gotten a pass on it just as Blackwater and other contractors got passes for the things they did/do.
Re:a shame (Score:4, Informative)
IMO, it would be illegal if you use a high gain microphone and uncommon, expensive equipment. A packet sniffer, for most people, comes straight from spy stories, and it's not much different to placing alligator clips on phone wires. After all, we "broadcast" our phone conversations on public wires that aren't much protected.
Phone lines aren't public. They're owned by the ISP. So using alligator clips on phone wires would constitute both b&e as well as destruction of property. Landlines aren't "broadcasted" in any sense of the word. Landline signal only travel in private spaces, therefore there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, unlike open WiFi which is broadcasted to the public space.
The reason is that we deal in perception of privacy. There are no absolutes. However when two persons talk in the street, they believe to have privacy if there is nobody around close enough to overhear their conversation. It's common sense.
When two people shout loudly to each other in the streets, they should have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That's exactly what open WiFi is.
Talking on the street the equivalent of encrypted WiFi, which doesn't apply to this case.
However cell phones don't broadcast - we say that they establish communication channels, point to point (from the handset to the base station.) Clearly intercepting that communication (however difficult today) would be wiretapping.
This is false. Cell phones broadcast unidirectionally on account of their antennae design. You can receive cell phone signals with a $100 scanner from radio shack. I'd hardly call that "uncommon, expensive equipment".
Decrypting those signals on the other hand, is much more difficult.
But what's the difference between the cell phone that carries your protected oral speech and the email that carries your protected written speech? The encryption can't define that, otherwise it would be legal to break into unlocked homes.
The difference is the encryption. Breaking into homes is illegal because there are laws against it. Whether the home is locked or not is irrelevant. There's nothing illegal about receiving public broadcasts, otherwise I would be be jail for all those years of participating in ham radio.