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Germany catches Google red handed at massive spying

K

KOM.Nausicaa

Guest
Germany catches Google spying on W-LAN and WiFi settings of all households as Google cars drove by for Google Street View. Seems this has been ongoing in all nations and for years where Google Street View was recorded.
So the question; What does Google want with massive thousandfold W-LAN and WiFi data collections ?? Is that nice free Google Street View just an alibi to record a whole different set of data for a yet unknown use for Google? Google calls this massive data collection " a technical mistake"...a mistake for years, yeah right!

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/google-street-view-cams/

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,694885,00.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html
 
This really angers and concerns me!

I was already upset that Google was going around taking pictures of nearly everyone's private residences and then indexing them by street address -- just so internet surfers can barge in on your home without invitation! I have always been concerned that Google was going too far into people's privacy.

Now to add this spying onto the issue is simply too much.

I really do not care how "insignificant" the information collected was. That's not the point. The point is that a private agency is caught doing stuff that neither the CIA nor FBI can legally do without a court authorized search warrant!

These guys need to be smacked down hard, very hard!

Ken
 
I'll admit to being uneasy about Streetview too...
This is exactly what privacy laws are about, though:
not to prevent Good Guys from doing Good Stuff, but to catch Bad Guys abusing it.

It's what keeps democratic governments honest, too - the thought that the next lot in power would have the same set of powers...
 

One of the local cable TV stations here is run by Washington State University, and they air lectures on various things. I like watching the ones on computer science, and one of them featured a guy from Google, talking about the technology and future of search engines. During the Q&A, one student asked if something, I forget what, was “possible.” The guy answered the question in an interesting way. “Lots of things that are possible, we don't so”, he said. “For example, it's possible to track your browsing habits in such as way as to be able to suggest things to search for on Google, based on what Google 'knows' about you. We don't do that”, he said, because one of our guiding principles at Google is 'don't be creepy', and that would be creepy.” Do you suppose the “bar” which distinguishes “creepy” from “non-creepy” has shifted over time at Google HQ?
 
Ken Stallings said:
The point is that a private agency is caught doing stuff that neither the CIA nor FBI can legally do without a court authorized search warrant!
Click to expand...

You are absolutely right - this stuff would make the KGB pale in the face with envy...I cant believe what Google says about this on their own blog: A "technical mistake, caused by a single guy". That is how you make scapegoats! Except it was going on for years.

Quote from Google blog:

Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.
Click to expand...
 
I don't see why people are bothered about streetview.

Thousands of people drive past and see my house on a daily basis. Why does it matter that there's a relatively low resolution photo of it on the internet? Because the crims will benefit? Benefit from what, looking at a photo taken from a publicly accessible road?

As for the information collected, it is a completely unusable and random data set. It means nothing in the slightest. I can perfectly legally take my phone out of my pocket sat here in my dining room and see the SSID's and the Mac address of the houses either side of me. Am I now partaking in a surveillance program? No harm no foul.
 
Skittles said:
I don't see why people are bothered about streetview.

Thousands of people drive past and see my house on a daily basis. Why does it matter that there's a relatively low resolution photo of it on the internet? Because the crims will benefit? Benefit from what, looking at a photo taken from a publicly accessible road?

As for the information collected, it is a completely unusable and random data set. It means nothing in the slightest. I can perfectly legally take my phone out of my pocket sat here in my dining room and see the SSID's and the Mac address of the houses either side of me. Am I now partaking in a surveillance program? No harm no foul.
Click to expand...

Because I bet the thousands of people who pass by your house have little idea who lives there, and even less idea to do anything criminal.

However, exposing your house by visual, with your address, to the billions of internet users the world over suddenly increases the odds of nefarious actions, wouldn't you say?

Cheers,

Ken
 
Ken Stallings said:
Because I bet the thousands of people who pass by your house have little idea who lives there, and even less idea to do anything criminal.

However, exposing your house by visual, with your address, to the billions of internet users the world over suddenly increases the odds of nefarious actions, wouldn't you say?

Cheers,

Ken
Click to expand...

I don't think so, but if you feel that way that's fair enough.

It's a photograph of what is completely visible from a main road. Anyone on earth could come and have a look at your house. Osama Bin Laden could come and stand outside and have a good gander.

I don't think criminals sit around going up and down roads on google earth all day, if only due to the fact that the images are poor resolution at any decent level of zoom, and that if they were going to rob a house they're not going to do it based on a google photograph taken years ago, they ALWAYS go to the house and scope it out.

I'd say the chance of a criminal walking past my house on the sidewalk and getting a good look is MUCH higher than some random crimbob surfing the net and deciding to rob somewhere.

Each to their own of course, I can kind of understand why people feel their privacy has been violated but personally I don't feel that way.

The best way I can summarize is to suggest that you find your house on streetview, and see whether it offers ANY benefits whatsoever as opposed to having a casual walk through the neighbourhood and seeing it properly.
 
Professional theives case homes and now they can use the internet to select homes at a vastly faster rate. That is just one aspect.

There are other theats out there.

Make no mistake, putting such details on the internet in methods easy for people worldwide to search and index has provided criminals free tools to assist in their efforts. At the top of the pinnacle are terrorists.

Not everyone in the world can afford high quality security systems. Google obviously put their profit options ahead of any observations along those lines!

The internet remains at this time an overall positive, but unfortunately the distance between overall negative versus positive has gotten smaller. In my view, no internet search engine should be able to provide people an option for photos of any home in America with or without the permission of the homeowner. I'm not niave enough to believe the genie can be put back in the bottle.

But, to then have these same companies engage in activities illegal for any law enforcement agency in the free world is a bridge too far for me. It's too much and these people need to go straight to jail.

Ken
 
That's nothing. In phoenix the city government have a new 'intelligence' system that watches cars going through intersections with the tons of traffic cameras and they computers calculate your daily routes, and run your plates, etc. They track people that have outstanding tickets, etc. It was big news here and then mysteriously went quiet.

London developed a street camera system for tracking people and cars via directions on the streets. Seems like Phoenix has gone a step further.

If you don't mind living under a magnifying glass, and a qustionable sheriff, move here, lol...


Bill

EDIT: sorry about the mis-spellings. Learning to type on the new iPad screen keyboard.
 
Lionheart said:
That's nothing. In phoenix the city government have a new 'intelligence' system that watches cars going through intersections with the tons of traffic cameras and they computers calculate your daily routes, and run your plates, etc. They track people that have outstanding tickets, etc. It was big news here and then mysteriously went quiet.

London developed a street camera system for tracking people and cars via directions on the streets. Seems like Phoenix has gone a step further.

If you don't mind living under a magnifying glass, and a qustionable sheriff, move here, lol...


Bill
Click to expand...

Many cities are installing a net of acoustic sensors that can pinpoint sound. They are using it to pre-empt people's needs for help, and more specifically they can pinpoint gunshots and dispatch officers to the exact place. I know that the system is in Chicago and Redwood City, CA. It's based on an old military system that can allegedly (entering the realm of the superstitious here)pinpoint and track voices, footsteps, just about anything that makes sound. The civilian version is advertised as having a filter that 'prevents' private info from being detected.
 
Ken Stallings said:
Professional theives case homes and now they can use the internet to select homes at a vastly faster rate. That is just one aspect.
Click to expand...

i can walk into several of our local estate agents, look at a brouchur for a house, see recent photos of the outside far better than i can on google, get a plan layout of it and pictures of what it has inside and take it home to study and even ask to view it to boot!

I cant see what the big hoo har is about it really, like skittle i get tons of people walking past my place and the google street view is "old" to put it kindly. If a burgular was seriouse in robbing your house they'd check it out first and not rely on google and you can bet that most burgulars will have a dam good idea about potential targets in his area anyway, they dont just walk round and go "o i'll rob that place tonight" :kilroy:
 
Ken, when a burglar "cases" a house or building, he's not concerned about the structure beyond a quick determination of an entry point. What they look for are human movement patterns, ie; when the people leave and how long are they gone.

The vast majority of residential buglaries in the USA take place during the day - on weekdays, while people are at work/school. Burglars are, like most criminals, cowards and pragmatists at the same time. They do not want any confrontation with residents at all.

Looking at a picture of your house on Google gives little or no info to a thief.

:running:
 
I found a site that will trace your IP addy, and show you a google map of your house.

Thanks google.
:(
 
Skittles said:
As for the information collected, it is a completely unusable and random data set. It means nothing in the slightest. I can perfectly legally take my phone out of my pocket sat here in my dining room and see the SSID's and the Mac address of the houses either side of me. Am I now partaking in a surveillance program? No harm no foul.
Click to expand...

Wrong. According to latest findings of the German Ministery of Consumer Protection, Google has also recorded private e-mail traffic and other data from unsecured WiFi and W-Lan connections while driving by for Google Street View.

Make no mistake guys. A super internet corporation like Google, that collects secretly massive worldwide data sets on, guess what, internet behavior of their "clients" - and this since 9 years - you think that is a innocent mistake, because some guy installed a little program he shouldn't have installed ? Don't make me laugh.
 
Ken Stallings said:
no internet search engine should be able to provide people an option for photos of any home in America with or without the permission of the homeowner.
Click to expand...

I agree, and that is why this option is now put to law in Germany before Google can publish street view in Germany.

I also want to make clear that I like street view. It's fun and educational. You can see what the street or the neighborhood is like of the hotel you want to book or the house to buy. You can plan vacations. It can help you learn about other cultures and countries. Whats New York like? Whats Tokyo or Berlin like ? Show Beijing to your kids... Google Earth and Street View are fun and you learn stuff. I think this is great.
I do however share Ken's concerns too. This kind of information can - and will - be used by the wrong people. As it has always happened with every tool in the history of humanity.
 
C'mon Google, try to break into my wireless...:>

WPA2-PSK with a 50+ letter passphrase and a MAC filter´should keep them busy for a fairly long time.
 
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