Google Street View Logs Wi-Fi Networks, MAC Addresses 559
An anonymous reader points to this story at The Register that says "Google is collecting more than just images when they drive around for the Street View service. 'Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.' There's a choice quote at the end: 'Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said Internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'"
Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't look good on the surface
Why can't Google (and everyone else for that matter) just stick to the personal data people are foolish enough to hand over to the web? This type of action puts them on the edge of WiFi hackers who are "just seeing if it could be done"
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically Schmidt's quote can be better worded as saying "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they're broadcasting something they have to hide".
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Informative)
Or in other words, "if you have something to hide, hide it". Privacy through obscurity is not an option on an indexed resource like t'internet.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Broadcasting? By making a search within Google?
Sorry but for example I rather keep the sex I have between me and my girlfriend our own private thing and not let everyone see it, or have videos of it. If I want to keep that to myself, according to Schmidt I shouldn't be having sex at all.
No, you shouldn't be recording the sex and placing the videos in a public location.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's more like, if there is a crack in the wall you have agreed to Google selling tapes of you having sex, if you didn't wan't to be recorded you shouldn't be broadcasting it!
I also got your girlfriend's moaning as my ringtone thanks to Google Street Laser Microphone, thankfully I didn't have to listen to weeks of mundane stuff to get that ringtone because I got a graph of your sad, appalling sexual life thanks to Google Street Thermo-cam.
I jest but the idea is that you can't claim I agreed to broadcast information I didn't knew I was broadcasting, and that's exactly what Google apologetics want to claim.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, Schmidt's quote can be better worded as saying "If you have something to hide, you shouldn't show it to the internet, because police can and will request that information from any provider, including Google".
But that doesn't sound at all as threatening, so let's just pretend he said something else!
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/184446/googles_schmidt_roasted_for_privacy_comments.html [pcworld.com]
Basically he's saying it's not as big a deal as everyone's making it out to be if they publish it on the Internet, because the US government is legally empowered to confiscate all of it without much due process.
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Sorry but recording all MAC addresses? Google's "Do no evil" just went out the door. There is no reason for Google to record the MAC addresses of devices.
Can people do scans and get that information, yes. The catch is they should have to do that scan to get it. ISPs most likely already know the MAC addresses, and they should it is their network.
Google is acting like it does not have to follow the rules.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but recording all MAC addresses? Google's "Do no evil" just went out the door. There is no reason for Google to record the MAC addresses of devices.
Actually, they do have a reason - it's called "WiFi geolocation", and can be used in conjunction with cell towers to pinpoint one's position much more precisely than towers alone can do. It's used in such capacity in Android, for example.
I've also heard that iPad (at least the non-3G variety) also uses WiFi geolocation.
In any case, I don't see the problem. On Slashdot, it has been said countless times in the past (e.g. with respect to websites being crawled when they don't want it to happen) that "if you put it in public, it's public". Well, guess what, that's precisely what a wireless access point does, if you tell it to broadcast its ESSID! It's not even something of the "unlocked door" variety, it's literally actively transmitting this information for everyone to hear. Noting it down is absolutely not a privacy threat - not anymore than the broadcast itself is in the first place!
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Informative)
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
That is the actual quote. I am pretending nothing.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Informative)
Except, you know, the quote given in the summary and article isn't what he said. What he actually said was "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." To me, that's quite a bit different from the quoted "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide." At worst, I would take his actual quote to mean that trying to hide illegal and/or amoral acts is impossible in the internet age, at least if such acts are done on the internet.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Informative)
You are also misquoting him by omission. There is a comma at the end of the sentence - not a period. The whole quote is as follows:
I think his quote is entirely appropriate and not scary at all. If you are doing something and you don't want anyone to know about it, you should consider whether or not you ought to be doing it in the first place. That's almost Kant's categorical imperative; instead of "would I be okay if everyone else did this", it's "would I be okay if everyone knew I did this". Not quite as strong a basis for a moral system, but still something to consider.
If you decide that yes, you ought to be doing this but it should also be a secret, don't put it on the Internet. Nothing on the Internet is a secret. That's all he's saying.
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"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."
Perhaps you can point out where in that he's saying "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide"?
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No, since the topic is mostly illegal actions, which should be obvious from the reference to the Patriot Act and requests by authorities.
And ever if it wasn't, that does still does not equal "internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide". No part of that statement talks about not worrying.
Schmidt is a Jackass! (Score:4, Informative)
He is hypocritical...
Check out the following article:
http://news.cnet.com/Google-balances-privacy,-reach/2100-1032_3-5787483.html?tag=nl [cnet.com]
Reaction from Google? CNET is barred one year from google.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Google-Angry-at-CNET-66164 [dslreports.com]
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Very true here, but consider the place (Score:5, Insightful)
What they are doing is not even questionable, it is completely legal.
That's true here in the US. Existence of companies like Skyhook and the iPod Touch's location feature make that evident. The question is if it's legal in Germany.
Not that it shouldn't be, particularly when an AP is metaphorically screaming,
Hello there, anyone who can hear me!
My name is Linksys!
You can tell me apart from other folks with the same name because I'm XX:YY:ZZ:AA:BB:CC!
If you like, I can give you an IPv4 address!
No, no, I haven't been told to exclude anyone who doesn't know my favorite word or phrase!
Please talk to me! I love you!
Here in the States, logging that you heard such a declaration rightly isn't against the law. Further, based on my very crude analogy, I also don't think that "unauthorized" connection/use of an unprotected/unconfigured AP should be a criminal offense either. Perhaps if someone learns that their pipe is being used against their knowledge, they could (and should) take civil action to force that person to pay for what he's been freeloading on, but I digress.
... Sorry about this, but unless you speak Italian and ol' Tony tells you what my favorite word or phrase is, I can't give you an IPv4 addres!" Any situation where network encryption is either bypassed or broken without the network owner's knowledge and permission is nefarious outright, regardless of intention, and that should most definitely be a criminal offense. Although if ol' Tony finds out before the cops do, you're probably even worse off.
For someone who actually breaks in to an encrypted AP (and yes, WEP counts), consider that WEP might be like a retarded-midget bouncer who'll believe you if you lie to him, whereas WPA could be, "My name is Linksys
Re:Very true here, but consider the place (Score:4, Informative)
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It does appear it can be done in Germany. Skyhook's coverage map shows plenty of of access points in Germany for their service. I would expect that they aren't all user submitted and more a result of the wardriving efforts to map certain areas. I don't know if they needed to do something special like registering with the government to allow this.
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And yes, your car plate number and your home address are both public already, but at least they are not published on the Internets are they?
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That's a pretty big leap from what is actually happening with these kinds of services. For one, it's possible to associate a person and their license plate without knowing where they live. But the only way you can associate a person with their SSID is going to their house, basically. And even then in a crowded apartment you'd probably be able to see sever
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yes, but imagine Google was logging car plate numbers together with the address location they are parked and then published all that information on the web.
A car plate number is linked to its owner's personal information. A MAC address or ESSID are not linked to anything.
And yes, your car plate number and your home address are both public already, but at least they are not published on the Internets are they?
The idea that adding "... on the Internet" to something fundamentally changes privacy issues is akin to a similarly silly idea that adding "... on a computer" to a patent somehow makes a new, patentable invention.
Re:Very true here, but consider the place (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that this seems legal in the US. However there are lots of things which are legal because they seem harmless in the small scale, but which become privacy concerns on the large scale. The current laws don't deal with situations like this.
An example is police tailing. Police are allowed to follow someone without practically any oversight. This is self-limiting because it takes manpower, which is a highly limited resource. However courts have stated that surreptitiously monitoring someone's car with a GPS is equivalent to police tailing. This is something which requires considerably less manpower. Tailing with GPS is no longer self-limiting. If this were done on a large-scale, lots of people would consider it an invasion of privacy.
An entity listening to broadcasts in the 2.4Ghz range in a small area is probably not a problem. An entity with the ability to listen to these broadcasts across the entire US? That's something worth rethinking. Maybe it's a problem, and maybe it's not. I really don't know. But due to the scale, it's a slightly different situation.
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Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
What they are doing is not even questionable, it is completely legal.
Do you know much about German law?
Because in the USA it IS questionable and in some cities it is ILLEGAL.
How do people use public wireless, then? They have to enter all the information manually, as opposed to scanning and just picking out the right SSID?
Could you post some of the case law / legal statutes involved? Thanks!
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:4, Insightful)
okay, so how is this different than any other wardriver or just anyone using wifi and how is it any more "enforceable"? Your computer keeps track of MAC addresses. There are apps that can be put on your phone to track mac addresses and open/close status while driving along with gps, and it's public information.
Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Or worse yet... it is like me driving around and logging (e.g. writing in a paper) the numbers of the houses...
And then some guy getting mad at me because I identified that the number of his house is in X street!! "OMG you are profiling me!"
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How does listening to publicly broadcasted information "steal bandwidth"?
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They've enabled locations in HTML5. I was playing around with "Dive into HTML 5 [diveintohtml5.org]" and for fun clicked on the "Locate me". It was dead on. Even though I was going through a Proxy server (so I know they didn't find me through IP). Scroll to the bottom, it's "A complete live example"
Prey Project [preyproject.com] using it as the geo locator for theft recovery. I've had Orbicule's Undercover [orbicule.com] for a while, and they use Skyhook. Prey Project is 100% open source (all bash scripts more or less) and digging through they're using Google
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Lets say that a given computer's MAC is known to exist in a given town. Now imagi
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This doesn't look good on the surface ... and reeks of Google's Buzz privacy blunders all over again.
Why can't Google (and everyone else for that matter) just stick to the personal data people are foolish enough to hand over to the web? This type of action puts them on the edge of WiFi hackers who are "just seeing if it could be done" ... except for that they're doing it for tens of thousands of personal and business WiFi networks.
My first reaction was the same - "How dare they play so fast and loose with 'private information' like that...", but on reflection, I'm not sure it's a bad thing. My house has wifi. It is secured well enough that I don't need to worry about he neighbors borrowing my bandwidth or a drive-by spam cannon causing me grief. Several of my neighbors..., not so much. It's 2010, folks. The risk of running an open wifi is well-known, as are the means to secure it, and still, most wifi routers/access points come out
Ignorance abounds (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. That's pretty shitty reporting, even for The Register. Yes, Google records SSIDs and (I guess) MAC addresses of wifi APs. That way they can estimate your position for Google Maps on a mobile device, even if you have no GPS on that device. This has been public knowledge for at least a year now.
In regards to Streetview itself and recording SSIDs and such, there is simply no privacy concerns. When you are in public, people can see you. When you broadcast signals, people can receive them. If you don't want to be seen, don't go out in public. If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.
Ignorance abounds indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same sort of problem that we complain about when a company collects little bits of information that you leak in public, and builds a dossier on you. Yes, the information is technically public, but the fact that it is being assembled en masse is the problem. It is impossible to hide ever detail of your life from view, but when such a large database is built up, it reveals a lot about a person, potentially including things they did not want revealed.
Re:Ignorance abounds indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but how would they map the SSID to you? All they know is that in this area, someone somewhere has a router with a SSID of "X." (And, if you're anything like my neighbours, half of those are named "linksys.")
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Also, they probably record the numeric SSID of the AP, which should be unique (although I have seen MAC addresses that ar
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Easy: They record the MAC address at the same time then when you surf to a site which has Google Analytics embedded in it they've got you!
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This assumes they are continuously recording signal strength with GPS position. Perhaps they are, I dunno. Just the same, as someone up above already pointed out, if you have an Android phone and enable the Wireless Location provider, it can pinpoint your accuracy to within 35m or so, which likely indicates they don't continuously capture signal/location (or don't do the calculations to enhance the reported accuacy) and that its very roughly 2x the distance between the street and your location.
Of course, th
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The privacy concern is that privacy concerners are fucking idiots like you.
ITS IN PUBLIC. ANYTHING IN PUBLIC IS, wait for it, PUBLIC!!!!!!!!!
It doesn't matter if you collect just one little bit of public information or you collect every single piece of public information. It's public. You have no right to expect privacy IN PUBLIC.
Re:Ignorance abounds (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.
Broadcasting an SSID is a strictly local affair - maybe within a range of 50 metres, tops. Having Google store the SSID and its location makes it a global issue. It makes it practical for the sort of government department we'd ALL prefer to keep away to hold and analyse this data.
However, the biggest problem I have with this sort of collection of data is that I was not asked if I minded having information regarding equipment I own collected by a third party, who then hold it and may pass it on to others without my permission, or even my knowledge.
Ma Bell (the original) (Score:5, Insightful)
In another ominous development, the phone company is planning to release a compiled document containing every name, address, and phone number of all their wired clients. The books will be published by region but be available globally. They'll be called by the disturbing name "White Pages".
They also will provide a charge-per-call service wherein on a request from not only government agencies but also private citizens, they will mining their data stores nationally in search of a particular individuals detailed info. While there is no clear consensus on this point, it appears this service will either be called 'Information' or mysteriously... just '411'.
They claim there will be an 'opt-out' option, but it will not be enabled by default, and there will be an extra charge for it's use.
Just some perspective to apply, not really meant as humor. This issue is about as dangerous as the phone book IMHO. You've got (or should have) an option in your router to hide your SSID. If you aren't using it, then you are BROADCASTING it. If someone tracking this information centrally really concerns you, change your SSID randomly every 30 days, and the MAC of your router. If your router doesn't support changing it's MAC, get a better one.
If it REALLY concerns you, don't use WiFi! There are much more nefarious things that can be done against WiFi than just logging an SSID/MAC that might actually be worth worrying about (again, IMHO).
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In another ominous development, the phone company is planning to release a compiled document containing every name, address, and phone number of all their wired clients
Really? Where I live, you are asked when you sign up for the phone service whether you want to be in the telephone directory, and you may (by law) opt out if you wish.
Thanks for your insight. (Score:2)
Re:Ignorance abounds (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to be seen, don't go out in public.
And yet many countries have laws against following someone around, noting down their movements.
If you don't want people to see the SSID of your AP, don't broadcast it.
I don't care if people see my SSID. I may care that a company (which makes its money from selling targeted advertising) has recorded it and stored it in a database along with location details, photographs, etc. That is fundamentally different from my neighbours and casual passers-by being able to see a SSID of "home" as they pass my house.
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Are you saying there needs to be a special law in place to prevent people and/or businesses from writing down your publicly broadcasted SSID? Maybe people should be fined or jailed? What would be the parameters on what you think should be possible?
Personally, I have a hard time conjuring up a reason to care that someone might have this info, so could you maybe paint your nightmare scenario? Is it something along the lines of "Through data-mining Google has been able to correlate my user accounts with my
Re:Ignorance abounds (Score:5, Insightful)
2+ years [zdnet.co.uk]. It's a great application, with no more privacy implications than if you were to call someone with local knowledge and describe the landmarks that you could see near you.
Nobody, least of all Google, cares who owns "BT Home Connect 9923123" or "Pr0n4Free4EvarLan", they just care that there's a SSID in that area with that name.
Cue objections from Tin Foil Hatters who don't want The Man to be able to describe the outside of their parent's basement, lest their very souuuuls be stolen and sold to, god, I don't know, the Saucer People.
Fill me in, Hatters. To what Evil use could this information be put? Try to use reasons that might actually be valid on Planet Earth, if you please.
WLAN location triangulation (Score:5, Informative)
Google Maps provides WLAN-based location triangulation, on both phones and wi-fi capable computers. To do that, they look up the MAC addresses of visible wi-fi hotspots in a location database. Google is not the only company that does this via wardriving, and they at last have the sense to keep it secure enough that nobody can just look up your MAC address and get your geographic location. Unlike certain other wi-fi positioning systems. [wordpress.com]
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I personally discovered this when my phone started insisting that I was living at my old apartment whenever I was at home.
My old place is halfway across town, and I moved nearly a year ago. Yet whenever you can see my access point...
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Please explain how.
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Ahh... But someone within Google probably COULD misuse that info.
The point was Google doesn't, and there are three or four other companies doing the same thing that DOES.
So what you are saying is, you only have a problem with American companies that COULD \maybe\ do something to violate your privacy but doesn't... But when they cross the line and finally DO something to violate privacy, then you are perfectly OK with it?
So Google just needs to sell your routers physical location to anyone on the internet, and you should be happy!
The Reciprocal (Score:5, Interesting)
If I don't have anything to hide, then what logical reason do you have to spy on me?
Of course this applies to private companies just as much as government.
And... (Score:4, Interesting)
'Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'
And what if I DO have something to hide? Will you then remove me from all of your databases and registers?
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what are you trying to hide?
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No, and that is why he said that. It was a statement of fact: Police can and will request that information, so you shouldn't be providing it if you want to hide it.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
And what if I have nothing to hide for the current government but don't get the assurance that today's laws are tomorrow's laws?
With enough information in the hands of governments, it's very easy to change a law, criminalize something that was perfectly legal and find and eliminate most of the 'criminals' under those new laws.
I know I'm kind of invoking Godwin's law here, but in 1939 it was perfectly legal to be Jewish here in the Netherlands. In the 1930s the Dutch government made an almost perfect register of the whole population, so in 1940 it was very easy for the Nazis to eliminate almost all the Dutch Jews.
"The Dark Side of Numbers" (Score:4, Interesting)
'In the Netherlands, the effort at establishing a comprehensive ... These registration systems and the related identity cards played
population registration system for administrative and statistical
purposes was completed even before the Nazi-occupation (Methorst,
1936; Thomas, 1937). In 1938 H. W. Methorst, who was then the
director-general of the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics and
formerly also head of the Dutch office of population registration,
reported on the rapid progress being made in the Netherlands in
implementing a new comprehensive system of population registration
that would follow each person "from cradle to grave" and open "wide
perspectives for simplification of municipal administration and at the
same time social research" (1938: 713-714)...
an important role in the apprehension of Dutch Jews and Gypsies prior
to their eventual deportation to the death camps. Dutch Jews had the
highest death rate (73 percent) of Jews residing in any occupied
western European country--far higher than the death rate among the
Jewish population of Belgium (40 percent) and France (25 percent), for
example."
source:
"The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in
Human Rights Abuses." Social Research, Summer, 2001, by William
Seltzer, Margo Anderson, hosted by findarticles.com:
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m2267/2_68/77187772/p4/article.jhtml?term= [findarticles.com]
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Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Those people who say "if you have nothing to hide" have something to hide -- their ignorance or contempt for your intelligence. There are a lot of things that are not illegal you don't want known; adultery is legal in Illinois. Even in states where it may not be illegal, you still wouldn't want your girlfriend to know she's not the only one. You may be a closeted gay working for a right wing congresscritter, or a closeted conservative working for a left wing congresscritter. You might not want people to know that you watch Mickey Mouse cartoons. The list goes on.
Either Schmidt is stupid (and I don't buy that) or he thinks you are.
Schmid (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually, he said that if you have $SOMETHING to hide then doing stuff concerned with $SOMETHING on t'internet is not a smart idea.
I just don't see the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
It's (generally) not illegal to take one picture of a storefront from your car. It's not illegal to take two, or three. Nor is it illegal to put those pictures on the internet. Google is just taking this process and deploying it on a larger scale than anyone previously had the resources for. I think it's the same with wireless networks. YOU have chosen to blast your MAC address into the ether for anyone within a certain radius to record, so why should you be surprised when someone does?
Google is just acting as an army of men with clipboards, no single one of whom is doing anything wrong, and for me it doesn't follow that there's something wrong when they do it en masse, provided they stick to public roads and take the privacy precautions (blurring faces, etc.) they have been.
Re:I just don't see the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
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The odds are stacked against an individual who might want to keep certain details of their life private when an organization as large as Google is trying to pry their lives open.
But Google isn't "prying", that's my point. They're collecting information that you have chosen to make available publicly, whether it's by placing it on the public Internet, or broadcasting it over EM waves where anyone nearby can pick it up. If you want privacy, don't announce your information in a public manner, and you will be off Google's radar. Google got blasted for Buzz (and deservedly so) because information that people thought they had selected as "private" was being made available, but that's not
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Even small details like MAC addresses may ultimately reveal a lot of private data about a person, particularly combined with other information (such as its geographic location?). No, nobody expects every single detail of their life to be private; at the same time, many of us do have secr
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It's (generally) not illegal to take one picture of a storefront from your car. It's not illegal to take two, or three. Nor is it illegal to put those pictures on the internet. Google is just taking this process and deploying it on a larger scale than anyone previously had the resources for.
There are things that can be done in the small scale that are not a problem, that become an issue when taken to the large scale. One example I deal with from time to time at work is aggregation of information - under the
Re:I just don't see the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest concern I have with street view is:
a) Burglars no longer need to visit an area to scout it to check for targets. The common argument from the pro-street view group against this is that well anyone could come down and take a picture for the same effect- that's true, but here's the difference, using my house an example. I live on a cul-de-sac, to get to my house and take pictures without someone noticing a guy with a camera would take some doing, everyone on our street knows everyone else, if someone came down, and turned around, someone would see them. If there was a subsequent burglary, then there would be witnesses who could point the police in the right direction in terms of a number plate, or a description of a person, or person(s) looking dodgy. With street view this is gone, people can now scout our street without ever knowing, they can perform a burglary without anyone have ever seen anyone suspicious looking coming down the street to scout it. They can spend as much time as they want examining the images on street view for best ways to rob the houses, or steal a car or similar. As much as the pro-street view grouping likes to suggest that because the images are taken from public places, it doesn't decrease security or make things any easier for criminals, they are wrong, it does. Which takes me to the second point:
b) The street view camera is quite high up, when browsing around on street view in the UK down by my girlfriends grand mothers house, I followed along a road, and was amazed to see how many walls I could see over that I'd never seen before. One image showed right over a wall you can't normally see over into a person's french windows that aren't normally visible showing a nice big 50"+ flat screen TV and a bunch of games consoles and games in full view, that no one passing by in the street would have otherwise ever known was there. The camera was most certainly too high on the street view vehicles and nullifies somewhat the argument that the images were taken from places where people could normally take pictures- could is perhaps true, but would? No, no one was going to walk around on stilts, or sat on someone elses shoulders or similar to take pictures in what would otherwise be random places. Again, if they were criminals, and if they did this it would raise further suspicion. People would remember seeing the culprits around.
I understand the theory that street view doesn't cause any issues in theory because they are just taking images from public places, but it's a theory that simply doesn't map to reality. Anyone scouting an area physically will be seen, there will be witnesses, if they take pictures of people's houses there will be a lot of suspicion from residents, if they hang around getting a good look into people's houses, there will be suspicion. Nothing lets criminals plan out a highly profitable crime spree and even map their best exit routes without ever having to be seen quite like street view does.
In the UK, I think what fucked me off most recently about it is that street view drove past the SAS HQ on a public road and photographed that too, yet a couple of MPs complained saying it put the SAS HQ's security at risk. Google accepted this and removed the images- I mean, wtf? So it's only a security risk for one of the most heavily defended army bases in the UK full of the best trained troops in the world, but it's not a security risk for say some unarmed old pensioner whose house has been filmed as a prime burglary target? Even if the approach was consistent it would be something, yet even that's not the case.
All this is not to say I'm totally against it, I think it's a cool piece of technology and I think a dataset of the world in images that large could prove vital to building new image recognition technologies and so forth (i.e. improving Google Goggles), I think my real concern is that it's not something that was well planned out, there wasn't enough public consultation, it does raise issues, and those issues have not been discussed and see
Re:I just don't see the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I just don't see the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, I have something to hide... (Score:2)
.There's a choice quote at the end: 'Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'
OK, let me take the learned man's position and agree that I have something to hide...so I should worry. Is it a crime to have something to hide? I thought not.
Now what? Yes, I have something to hide so I am worried about my privacy....so just go away Google. Just go away. Will you just leave me and my "stuff" alone please.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OK, let me take the learned man's position
The learned man's position is to distrust what he is told by strangers, and check facts for himself.
You didn't do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I have something to hide so I am worried about my privacy....
Still waiting for the part where you explain it's google's responsability to hide it for you.
If you indeed have something to hide, hide it. Don't spread it all around and then demand everyone else to not read it.
Dear Google (Score:2, Insightful)
Can you please explain how wardriving is not evil?
Oh, and, by the way, off course I do have something to hide. That is why it is called privacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
If you yell things in public places you can't expect people to not hear them, remember them, write them down if interesting.
If your access point broadcasts its ssid and mac address you can't expect devices to not see them, remember them, record them.
Re:Dear Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Wardriving is evil now? This is news to me...
It's not exactly like they are going to jump on your network and listen to all of your traffic. They're just recording your MAC address and your SID (which you chose to make publicly available) which you are blasting out into the world on the electromagnetic spectrum. Really this is no different than them driving past your house and recording what color you painted it.
MAC to Facebook mapping? (Score:2)
How on earth can you map the MAC (of assuming you wireless router) to a facebook account? Besides, it's the MAC which might be visible (don't know if it is) in the WIFI data a different one that the MAC used by the external interface which connects to the ISP?
Re: (Score:2)
How on earth can you map the MAC (of assuming you wireless router) to a facebook account? Besides, it's the MAC which might be visible (don't know if it is) in the WIFI data a different one that the MAC used by the external interface which connects to the ISP?
It is different, but usually the WAN interface is next to it.
Also MAC addresses do not traverse the internet, they are only used between devices on the same network segment. As soon as your traffic gets passed through a router, the associated MAC info changes to the routers MAC. AFAIK.
Origin of Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh dear, I wish he hadn't said that. I hope he does too. Even quoted a bit out of context (it was possibly a flip tagline), when you direct activities at the biggest datalogger around and have capabilities that most people regard as extremely penetrating, you just do not say anything that might scare people. Bad for business.
Many people do not understand why privacy is a right. As he says "Why worry if you have nothing to hide?" It is not from nothing: One word answer: PREJUDICE. Privacy is basically a right of self defense against prejudice (and malice too, for that matter). We all have good reason to be concerned about the impression we make upon others since they can often make arbitrary decisions that affect our interests.
Of course others have a right to relevant information, but we have a right to control how much beyond we choose to present, and to whom. We do have a right to be treated as individuals. Not products of some correlation -- statistics is _descriptive_, not prescriptive.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
yeah he didn't say that actually. in a nutshell, he said that in the age of the patriot act where the government can access any electronic record, if you are doing something illegal, you had better not be doing it in the internet.
I use LINUX (Score:5, Funny)
so I guess only people unsavvy enough to use MACs will have their addresses recorded! Whew!
I don't (Score:5, Funny)
I don't have a mac address. I use PCs.
hide... (Score:2)
YOU don't have anything to actively search there in the first place.
Pinpointing your location via this (Score:3, Funny)
I can just see Google Maps now - "We have found you are near wifi access point Linksys. We have narrowed your location down to one of these 1,232,342 locations."
Easy fix (Score:4, Funny)
if you are in front of my house, google will tell you that you are in Southern California (1500 miles away)
(no this post is not actually true)
Apple and the iPhone/iPod Touch already use this (Score:3, Informative)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1975 [apple.com]
"Location Services allows applications such as Maps, Camera, and Compass to use information from cellular, Wi-Fi1, and Global Positioning System (GPS)2 networks to determine your approximate location. This information is collected anonymously and in a form that does not personally identify you.
About location precision or accuracy
Depending on your device and available services, Location Services uses a combination of cellular, Wi-Fi, and GPS to determine your location. If you're not within a clear line of sight to GPS satellites, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS can determine your location using Wi-Fi3. If you're not in range of any Wi-Fi, iPhone can determine your location using cellular towers."
Do you know how they figure out your relative location via Wi-Fi? Yep...they've already got a map of transmitters in the wild to refer to, just like the map Google is building.
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also not at all the argument he was making. But it's much more fun to just believe everything we hear on the internet rather than look up what he actually said!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if you read Schmidt's comment...
Which you clearly didn't actually do. You just believed what the internet told you that he said, without bothering to check for yourself.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think you're confusing Google with the DEA.
Corporations have more rights than individuals (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore, I'm free to decrypt satellite TV and get HBO for free, right? After all, the signal is OUT THERE, so large corporations should fully expect me to decode it on my own and play it through my TV.
Why is it that corporations expect privacy, but citizens should not expect it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that you can hide your MAC address by simply turning off SSID broadcast, and your router is no longer screaming it.
TV content distributors use satellites to distribute content. If you use that, you must decrypt it. But you can sit and watch patterned static all day long, use the streamed signal to generate pseudorandom locations, and even point a focused receive-only antenna at the satellite and use the satellite as a point of reference if you want to.
The signals the device intentionally broadcasts