News Google had knowledge of Wi-Fi sniffing, claims FCC

A report from the FCC claims that Google management was aware of the Street View Wi-Fi sniffing code

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2012/04/30/google-wi-fi-sniffing-fcc/1

 

Do they expect anyone to believe this crap? Google is no different to any other big business, generally they all fall between 2-5 / 10 on the ethics scale.

 

Terry the Sheep: Meeeeeeeer?
Me: Thats right Terry!, after helping Grigori with his Poincare' Conjecture malarky and setting him straight on a few matters( obviously if John sold Chris 5 apples at 10p each and then stole them back while he wasn't looking then sold them to Val for 11p each plus 15% interest minus 6.2% investment tax at the base rate of 2.5% he was laughing all the way to Barclays Bank), I went on Chernobyl's got Talent and won!
Terry the Sheep: Meeeeeeeeer!
Me: I know Terry I couldn't believe it either, thay all gave me Three thumbs up
Terry the Sheep: Meeeeeeeeer

 

What on earth are you talking about?!

 

A $25,000 fine? I'm sure Larry and Sergey will be up at night in cold sweats worrying about how they're going to pay that one.

 

"Don't be evil" my ass.

 

Unsecured wifi is detected news at 10!

 

A bit like recording part of telephone call held in public while your taking a video of your child playing? If you want privacy take some basic measures go inside and hold your phone call or put a very simple password on your wifi.

To me its all about intent, just as though you might over hear a very personal conversion in the street your intent isn't to be eaves dropping, following people with a tape recorder changes the nature of the situation.

 

Your wifi doesn't respect the boundaries of your property it is broadcast into the public space, you can't play your music with the window open then complain people are listening to it.

Google didn't proverbially walk in to an unlocked house they walked past and heard part of a song.

 

No. They were capturing and analyzing few packets of data going through your wireless network, which probably to surprise of some people contains the network identification. And they need this network identification, so they can give you a rough geolocation instead of using GPS.

If they captured few packets of your unsecured data, it is your own stupidity, and everyone else could do that. If they captured few packets of your WEP secured data, same applies to you. If they captured few packets of your WPA2 secured data, then except the network identification no other data can be used.

 

Tragically I don't have time to read a 25 page legalese document, I rely on you to condense it for me

My point exactly Google has violated the letter of the law but it did not violate the spirit of the law. There was no intent to eavesdrop, wiretap or what ever else they recorded a fragment of a private conversation made in a public arena (the street) for at most a couple of seconds.

This is a storm in a tea cup, if privacy campaigners really want to get het up about something there are much bigger issues with much greater intent to fry.

 

But it's not as if they were just wandering around and happened to hear a snippet of a conversation (albeit a WiFi "conversation") - the issue at hand is that the system was built to actively listen to conversations. It's the difference between accident and intent - and as far as Google is concerned, the intent to listen was there.

I'm guessing that the issue wasn't big enough, and the data sniffed wasn't used for any purpose (as far as we know), to require a fine - but Google's lying about the matter is what gave them the $25k fine. I'm guessing that this could have further ramifications for Google, as it could encourage investigation into Google's storage and use of other private information?

 

The intent was to get list of WiFi networks, combined with the current GPS location of the car, which would then allow you, the user to be geolocated without the need for power hungry GPS. The reason why they used this method instead of the official WiFi method is simply because getting list of WiFi networks in standard way is too slow - turn on your your WiFi adapter and watch how it takes sometimes even seconds for some networks to show up. Capturing few packets instead and getting the SSID and ID of the WiFi network is much more simple from technical standpoint.

And the one about the engineer saying his superiors how he intends to do it - we all know was that probably handled :

Employee : "Hey boss, you asked me to add WiFi network enumeration to the Google Street View cars. Well, using standardized methods it is too slow, cars would have to crawl at 20km/h speed all the time. But i came up with an idea - grab the WiFi packets, put them together with GPS location and later extract the network identification from headers. This would allow us to go through the cities at speed limits, without slowing down the traffic. What do you say boss ?"

Boss: "Sure, whatever if it gets the job done".

... some time later, after FCC starts the investigation...

Google CEO: "WTF".

 

faugusztin has the point covered here - for all the tin-hat brigade, what would they do with such information otherwise?

 

lol, some Google fanboys really trying to defend this here.

It's an absolute disgrace that management lied when asked if they knew this was happening.

 

Earth? I'm on earth?

 

They were capturing completely unencrypted information. "Bad" sure, but for any resonable interpretation of laws like the wiretapping law and earlier laws, not illegal. Just like if you want to broadcast a radio signal unencrypted and then get pissed off that someone next door was listening in on their FM box.

The tools and know how might not be quite as common as turning on an FM radio, but just about any full fledged computer with a Wifi network card can do it very, very easily and with relatively limited or no knowledge of how to (a simple google search turns up easy step by step directions).

As for Google having wide information about it, that doesn't sound like the case. Brueaucraies are this funny things, just because someone, even a few someones know what is going on doesn't mean most people do, or even higher levels. What is a senior manager in this case? The engineers immediate boss 4 levels down from the CEO? Was it was of the C-grade guys running the show? Even a junior VP? Or are we talking some guy so removed from the leadership of Google that they have their email or phone call passed through at least 2 other people before the CEO is going to catch wind of it?