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.'"
Fed. Wiretapping Laws? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:a shame (Score:4, Insightful)
it was authorized by the WAP owners (Score:3, Insightful)
If you run an open WAP, you have authorized people to listen to the data going by.
If you do not want that, the protocol provides an official blessed way to say you want your data private.
You get to pick which one you want. Don't pick one and then bitch about your own choice. Punishing google for this WILL set a dangerous precident that will be used against all of us by big corporations in the future. We MUST maintain a world where we are free to listen to unencrypted signals going through our own property.
It's critical. The bigger issue here has nothing to do with google: it's about preserving our OWN freedom.
Users are not stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a shame (Score:4, Insightful)
If the people were outside screaming their online banking credentials out loud and Google happened to be driving a car with microphones recording ambient noise at the time, would that be illegal?
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.
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.
There is yet another note. "Broadcasting" means transmission that is intended for everyone to receive. Radio and TV stations broadcast. 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. 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.
Re:it was authorized by the WAP owners (Score:5, Insightful)
No - it is about reasonable expectations for privacy. To some extent we cannot expect absolute privacy with our neighbours, but we should expect that wholesale corporate intrusions to privacy are scorned upon. Could I, for example, point a higjhly sensitive microphone at someone's house, from a public street, and record their conversation? You could say that unencreypted data is public, but you could also argue that doing so violates the interlocutors expectations of privacy.
Re:What about 2 party states? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how this would go over in states with wire taping laws that require consent from both parties?
The process would be the same as for one-party consent because neither party here was aware of the wiretapping. Google is not a party to the conversation.
As a previous poster mentioned what is different between this and shouting your banking info in a public area and having Google record it?
You can shout your banking information in the middle of a desert and expect to be safe. However Google broke your expectation, however incorrect it was in the first place. Unbeknownst to you, Google buried microphones in the sand, for no reason other than to intercept whatever visitors to the desert might be saying.
We are supposed to be secure in our communication. Written laws don't cover all the ways of communication, and they don't cover all the ways of being secure. It's for a qualified human (known as judge) to decide. The judge have decided based on common sense, not on technicalities. But geeks like to ride on technicalities; if something was technically possible for an attacker to do, then it's OK. Obviously that's not so; almost every door lock can be picked, but it doesn't make it legal to go around and pick locks - even if you only look inside. House windows are transparent, but it doesn't make it legal or moral to go around and peek into windows.