Posted on 06/30/2014 10:07:27 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Google Inc's bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of violating federal wiretap law when it accidentally collected emails and other personal data while building its popular Street View program.
The justices left intact a September 2013 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused to exempt Google from liability under the federal Wiretap Act for having inadvertently intercepted emails, user names, passwords and other data from private Wi-Fi networks to create Street View, which provides panoramic views of city streets.
The lawsuit arose soon after the Mountain View, California-based company publicly apologized in May 2010 for having collected fragments of "payload data" from unsecured wireless networks in more than 30 countries.
Google was accused of having collected the data while driving its vehicles through neighborhoods from 2008 to 2010 to collect photos for Street View.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Tech ping.
The first comment at the source alleges that Google designed that in... they did war driving as they videoed, and grabbed neighborhood peripheral data as they went, from people who hadn’t bothered to password protect their networks.
That was pretty presumptuous of Google. I do not know what they hoped to accomplish by doing this. “Dear john@doghouse.com: we took note of your email address while we were going down Main Street in Hackersville, USA. Please look at our photos of this street and let us know if you like them.”
Funny thing, though, a degree of snooping that might get an individual thrown in jail results in a fine that is a pittance for a corporation like Google.
Does anyone know how to get a job with Google driving around in a camera truck?
They were collecting wifi network names (SSID) and their locations so that they could use that data to help user geolocate themselves more quickly. The other data came along for the ride. People should have encryption enabled on their networks anyway. What google did is more analogous to recording CB radio transmissions than wiretapping.
They did it to provide mapping of open WiFi access points which many are public on purpose. For example a coffee shop or fast food restaurant.
The bottom line is, if people don’t secure their networks while using the public airwaves they should have no expectation of privacy. I think calling it an illegal tap is seriously bad law.
Especially since SSIDs are not guaranteed to be unique.
At best this is too clever by half. Oh, this guy’s email (which they can see if he is logged into gmail) looks like the chatter we found at the corner of 2nd and Maple, Anytown. We think we’ll bring that corner right up when he asks for Google Maps.
They managed to follow my MAC ID to suggest places I hadn’t been to in a coon’s age.
What is Location-Aware Browsing?You can test it out here: http://html5demos.com/geoHow does it work?
When you visit a location-aware website, Firefox will ask you if you want to share your location.
If you consent, Firefox gathers information about nearby wireless access points and your computer’s IP address. Then Firefox sends this information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate is then shared with the requesting website.
If you say that you do not consent, Firefox will not do anything.
Well that’s kind of double-talky misleading.
Share your location? Well, unless my ISP will tell them that, they shouldn’t know.
I happened to be granted a US patent, by the way, on a means of location-adaptive website behavior. It was based on the user’s domain. If some voice had whispered to me that I should use some snooped network information, and hide the description of what I was doing on some other web site, I would have told it that it was crazy.
I mean how else, a bunch of cookie and Google-stored-data clearings later, would they know I had been in Maryland?
But somehow, yeah, they did it. On a completely new Linux installation on an old netbook that I had been using in Maryland. My MAC ID is the ONLY thing that would have been the same!
But it would be so CONVENIENT to be able to destination-map the truck stop that was next to the motel I stayed in for 3 months while contracting in Maryland 2 years ago...
Google is too big for its britches. When I want Google to forget, I mean it!
I call this creepy and spooky behavior. Unless I can know how Google knows something I expect it NOT to know!
I mean, they probably have a record of everything my MAC ID surfed in the Google network, right down to the last grotty You Tube video. A veritable Golem of snoopdata.
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