Google Found Guilty of Australian Privacy Breach

schliz writes "The Australian Privacy Commissioner has found Google guilty of breaching the country's Privacy Act when it collected unsecured WiFi payload data with its Street View vehicles. While the Commissioner could not penalize the company, Google agreed to publish an apology on its Australian blog, and work more closely with her during the next three years. Globally, Google is said to have collected some 600 GB of data transmitted over public WiFi networks. In May, the company put its high-definition Australian Street View plans on hold to audit its processes."

Private?

[www.sorehands.com]

I agree to a point. If you don't secure your connection and get sniffed, it is your fault.

The fact that Google snooped it does not make their actions any better. If they had snooped and only picked up SSID and Mac addresses, then that is one thing.

This may have served an important purpose, it woke people up about security on WIFI connections.

Re:Mind Block

[vlueboy]

Bravo.
The single problem with google's invasion is that they go beyond *my product spec* and extend the 50meter range of your wireless to worldwide distances, even if it's just a few useful bits. All without permission. People get sued for ignoring re-broadcasting "laws" here in the states.

Re:Gotta love our stupid laws

[ILuvRamen]

okay, so walk around an entire city while detecting and recording all sound, digital transmissions in all forms, and all analog signals too. Yeah it's "public" because it's floating through the air but you're still just walking around, spying on random people and that's frowned upon legally in most countries. So any fraction of that like just recording open wifi data is also illegal. That's the logic behind it at least, it's still stupid.

Wait for Google's appeal, if any.

[freddienumber13]

Were you given the same evidence to consider as the Australian Government?

Or are you just making blind assumptions about what you think happened vs what really happened according to the evidence provided by Google to the Australian Government?

In other comments on this activity, it appears that you are wrong and that Google *did* actually connect to private (even if insecure) networks and *did* collect more than beacon data.

If you have evidence that can show that Google did not collect personal data, by all means share it.

Note, that Google worked with the Australian government and undoubtedly handed over whatever data it had collected. I'm pretty sure that the Australian Government would have handed the data to people familiar (if not experts) with this type of activity and asked them to analyse it. Thus the "guilty" is quite likely founded on real evidence, whereas your post is likely based on speculation.

If Google is not guilty then I'm sure they will appeal this to the courts. If they don't then that is Google agreeing with the Australian Government and disagreeing with you.