Google Describes Wi-Fi Sniffing In Pending Patent 134
theodp writes "After mistakenly saying that it did not collect Wi-Fi payload data, Google had to reverse itself, saying, 'it's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks.' OK, mistakes happen. But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets by operating a device — which 'may be placed in a vehicle' — in a 'sniffer' or 'monitor' mode and analyzing them on a server? Guess belated kudos are owed to the savvy Slashdot commenter who speculated back in January that the patent-pending technology might be useful inside a Google Street View vehicle. Google faces inquiries into its Wi-Fi packet sniffing practices by German and US authorities."
Wardriving? (Score:4, Interesting)
A patent?
Isn't that exactly the same thing which wardrivers have been doing since WiFi existed?
Re:Wardriving? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why patent it? is that to stop other people doing the same?
Honestly, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Apple and co, put them on a big ship and sink it. They don't want to compete, they want to lock up very generic ideas and stop everyone else from using them.
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Isn't that exactly the same thing which wardrivers have been doing since WiFi existed?
Yeah, but the wardrivers didn't patent it.
Cop Car: "Hey buddy, pull over! You are wardriving and thus infringing on a patent owned by the Google corporation!"
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Prior art.
Peeping Toms (Score:1)
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Yes it is, and sadly even though everyone on Slashdot realises this there doesn't seem to be a way for us to tell the patent office about the prior art.
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No. That would be "GWardriving(tm) Beta"
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One group Google does not want to go against is GWAR.
http://www.gwar.net/ [gwar.net]
Mr Hyde? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe I'm stupid, but it looks like apples and oranges to me. Google was/is collecting packets to capture the *header* information; this data allows them to deduce other people's locations. Google was also, in some cases, also collecting *payload* data, which is (a) accidental, and (b) pretty useless (please give me any example of how to use this nefariously). Germany is pretty upset about it, probably because they want to establish a precedent that people shouldn't do this rather than any belief that ac
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Capturing and doing various tricks to strip headers, reassemble payloads, and otherwise dither with wired and wireless packets in fixed and non-stationary ways has been done since before Sergi Brin was out of diapers. I'm guessing that prior art eats their expensive lunch.
Of course, the not-invented-here syndrome coupled to over-paid internal IP attorneys will argue contrarily.
Re:Mr Hyde? (Score:4, Insightful)
They have strict laws to make sure you do not record people on cameras, voice calls and now data.
What google did was intercept communications not intended for them and keep the fragments they sucked up.
They did this around the world, long term and had to set the tech up to do it and keep the data collection going.
When caught by the press they tried to fake their way out with a local admission and then where forced to tell more of the truth only when exposed further.
Google missed a request from the German gov to show what data they collected and how it was stored ect.
That kind of throws "accidental" and "pretty useless" out.
"Accidental" would be a beta test car in one city, data dump found, turned off and local permission to wifi map requested.
As for what it is used for, who knows what google sells in bulk beta form to its customers about its consumers (end losers).
How many external eyes got to scan city maps with MAC, IP and plain text data for keywords?
From spam to ip misuse to police raids to state task forces and COINTELPRO 2.0 dreams?
The state sends out spyware/p2p hunt, finds an open MAC and wants to sneak and peak based on googles "bulk" data.
Wrong family, wrong time, right MAC.
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BTW, I think if this is not covered by prior art (the practice of war driving), it is for sure an obvious extension of it.
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They did this around the world, long term and had to set the tech up to do it and keep the data collection going.
Perhaps its silly of me to ask, but is this speculation, or fact that can be sourced?
Google missed a request from the German gov to show what data they collected and how it was stored ect.
My understanding from every article ive seen on the topic is that, whilst complying with the German authorities, they discovered the issue, promptly announced it, and complied with requests to delete the data. Can you provide a link that shows otherwise?
How many external eyes got to scan city maps with MAC, IP and plain text data for keywords?
Is this like that whole "did glenn beck rape and murder children in 1990" thing, where you can ask questions based in fantasy to imply wrongdoing? Do you have any evidence
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"They did this around the world, long term and had to set the tech up to do it and keep the data collection going." http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h8imuNrdgq9uo-_uDoktPD05Y2Rw [google.com]
Google said Street View cars have been collecting WiFi data in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Por
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It was 600 gigabytes of data out of god knows how much total. It was easy for it to not be noticed. They intentionally collected MAC addresses. there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was that they recycled some code from another project and that resulted in the entire packet (instead of just the MAC address) sometimes being saved.
But understand we're talking about a few packets per network. This is a tiny tiny tiny amount of data. The code also switched networks every second, so we're talking abou
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When caught by the press they tried to fake their way out with a local admission and then where forced to tell more of the truth only when exposed further.
Bzzt. Google came clean about it themselves. The press never found anything. If Google had just silently deleted the data instead of being a "good citizen" and saying they had done it, we wouldn't even know about this right now.
Google clearly learned it's lesson from this. Don't be the good citizen, just shut up and delete the data without saying anything because stupid idiots will always be stupid idiots.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/business/15google.html [nytimes.com]
"... But the company explicitly said then that it did not collect or store so-called payload data — the actual information being transmitted by users over unprotected networks."
Or read from :
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html [blogspot.com]
"we did not collect payload data " changes to "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data" then they tack on 'we never used that data"
Also note how th
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I said:
... collecting *payload* data, which is (a) accidental, and (b) pretty useless (please give me any example of how to use this nefariously).
You replied:
Just think of it as Doubleclick dba Google and the picture is clear.
Every would be accidental acquisition of some sort of user data simply isn't accidental at all. Don't be fooled by any explanations since such explanations will always have an element of omission or deception. Don't ever think data requested to be deleted was ever truly deleted, it's just suppressed from immediate use but likely still stored somewhere on a server or backup tapes for future use at some point.
Everyone has to decide for themselves if they want to keep supporting Doubleclick via the Google branded products.
Sorry, not clear at all. I accept that Doubleclick potentially has access to the data, and I'll even accept that some copies of the data will stick around indefinitely. Now please explain how a random couple of minutes of data from my home WiFi is useful to anyone? The only thing that I can see it being used for is statistical analysis, maybe for web ranking the popularity of sites. Even then your analysis is flawed because you're only seeing non-encrypted access points; people at a c
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pretty useless (please give me any example of how to use this nefariously)
If the payload happened to contain a Google search request, or an HTTP request to a site that sues Google Analytics, then they can correlate this with the other information that they have and go from a cookie (which tells you the things the user has ever searched for) to a specific computer (MAC address) and even to a specific house number. The same if the packet was sent to Google's DNS servers.
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If the payload happened to contain a Google search request, or an HTTP request to a site that sues Google Analytics
I had no idea HTTP requests could sue! Think of the possibilities!
*I'm sure you probably ment uses
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After a google search (oh the irony) I went to this site (while using Wifi) http://whatismyipaddress.com/ [whatismyipaddress.com] and guess what, google (or any other visited website) doesn't need to get lucky with Wifi data to know what city I am in, when I am using my WiFi connection.
to a specific computer (MAC address) and even to a specific house number.
not really, mostly wifi is used by "laptops" If they have a cookie already, and a plenty of unique information [schneier.com] on your computer, knowing a rough estimation of where your laptop was in a 5 minute window, isn't vary valuable (IMHO). Then again go
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Im sorry if I come off as a google apologist, defending them all the time, but my goodness people just seem to want to ignore fact and the actual articles, so they can wildly speculate about what awful things google is doing.
Wifi Sniffing is an old term (Score:2)
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Wifi Sniffing and wardriving are two overlapping but different concepts. Sniffing is passively capturing wireless LAN traffic, i.e. a very broad term. Wardriving is when a mobile receiver passively captures a specific subset of WLAN traffic, namely the beacon frames, for the purpose of finding and listing but not accessing wireless LANs. What Google supposedly wanted to do was wardriving. What Google actually did was Wifi sniffing.
What website is this again? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am totally unconcerned with Google or anyone else collecting this kind of data. If you don't want anyone to know about your access point then stop broadcasting for hundreds of feet over public property. If you don't want me to decrypt your satellite feeds to get free TV then stop broadcasting it into my receiver on my property.
Re:What website is this again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am totally unconcerned with Google or anyone else collecting this kind of data. If you don't want anyone to know about your access point then stop broadcasting for hundreds of feet over public property. If you don't want me to decrypt your satellite feeds to get free TV then stop broadcasting it into my receiver on my property.
I don't mind that people see me when I go out on the street.
But at the same time, I don't want Google or any other company to film me, and digitally store every trip I make.
But following your line of thought, I should reason that if I don't want Google to film me in my own street, then I shouldn't go outside.
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I am totally unconcerned with Google or anyone else collecting this kind of data. If you don't want anyone to know about your access point then stop broadcasting for hundreds of feet over public property. If you don't want me to decrypt your satellite feeds to get free TV then stop broadcasting it into my receiver on my property.
I don't mind that people see me when I go out on the street.
But at the same time, I don't want Google or any other company to film me, and digitally store every trip I make.
But following your line of thought, I should reason that if I don't want Google to film me in my own street, then I shouldn't go outside.
But the security camera in the store is okay? How about the atm you walked by? chances are it took your picture also.
the light you stopped at? Didn't see the camera on it?
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You do realise that sending an SSID over the airwaves is not an implicit offer to "the public" that you "advertise a service", yes?
I mean, if I put a sign in front of my house giving the name of my house, am I telling you that you can come in and use it at your whim?
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No. Not strictly broadcasting an SSID, but open, unencrypted networks are much more of a grey area. Did someone leave the AP open so they could share? Is it a businesses AP for their customers and anyone else that might be able to get it? Consider that just about every new ap out there has encryption enabled by default. Obviously someone had to open up the AP, or they are running an ancient 802.11b device. Anymore open APs are pretty much the exception the the norm. I say if its open, you might as well try
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Unencrypted networks are not a grey area. You're just making them out to be since it fits your immoral and illegal behaviour.
1) The majority of new APs do not have encryption enabled by default
2) If you are unsure of its reason for being open, assume the safest option, not the one that just happens to suit you
3) The AP is broadcasting its open status, not the owner. Last I checked, electronic devices do not have the legal right to grant permission to their connection
This isn't ethical rocket science, just a
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One thing I discovered is that some mainstream brands of wireless APs are *still* defaulting to wireless enabled, completely open. They could at least print some random diceware-esque code (so the words are easy to remember, but the WPA key is of a decent length) on the bottom of the machine (or even better, hot-stamp it into the plastic so the printing doesn't rub off.)
I also have seen devices grab a firmware upgrade without anyone knowing, reset to a default config, and since the LAN is so standard, nobo
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There are *alot* of ancient B devices, not to mention a huge number of newer G devices that simply do not interact
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In the case of a closed network with the SSID broadcast, we have an even more obvious analogy. You're broadcasting that the SSID exists, but demanding a key to authorize access.
So what you're suggesting is that it should be illegal to walk down the street writing down the addresses written on mailboxes or store fronts. That's obviously absurd.
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Sending ("announcing") an SSID over the airwaves is the definition of advertising its existence.
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You are one of about three people with that straw man.
No-one disagrees that broadcasting an SSID is advertising the existence of the station, but it doesn't follow that broadcasting the SSID is advertising a service for the public. It's the difference between "here's my house, it's called XYZ" and "here's my house, it's called XYZ, please feel free to come in and use it".
Perhaps you could take some time to think of reasons why you might want to make everyone aware of the existence of something in the vicini
Re:What website is this again? (Score:4, Funny)
In addition, start using WPA, stop broadcasting your SSID, etc.
Personally, I do use WPA, but I still broadcast my SSID, which is currently set to 'hacker' and for some reason the neighbors say they don't want to mess with that wireless network. ;)
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Meanwhile, I have 4 seperate Linksys WRT54G-TM units sporting directional antennae in the attic along each of the outside walls in my house. Each broadcasts the SSID and makes NO use of encryption. When the most sensitive site I could possibly log in to without requiring https is going to sell my strawberry harvest datum to its sales 'partners' anyway? It seems to me that security should be starting a little further from home.
In addition to good will toward and from my neighbors, I receive plausible deniabi
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Turning off broadcasting is absolutely pointless if you use WPA. Any tool that will allow you to crack WPA or mess with the AP will also uncover the AP almost instantly if there is ANY activity, and your laptop will periodically announce to the world that it knows that SSID.
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Even if the SSID isn't broadcast, it is still findable by a decent wardriver.
My view on wireless security is twofold:
First, if nothing is using the wireless router, most routers have a checkbox to turn the wireless off, or just physically detach the power and network cords. An attacker can't attack what isn't available.
Second, WPA2-PSK at the minimum, maybe WPA if some old device can't be updated to use it. Ideal would be WPA2-Enterprise and a RADIUS server, and the best is authentication using smart card
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if you would kindly give me your address, cowardly Anonymous Coward, I shall be following you around and recording you for the next six months of your life whenever you are on public property, also recording you in your home as far as those light/infrared/etc waves are being broadcast out to public property. I shall be putting out all this information on the Internet.
If you don't want anyone to know about your life, lock yourself up in your home in a Faraday cage.
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His name is Brad Pitt.
And you'll have to fight the other 20 people doing the same thing.
See? Already happening. Already commonplace. Completely accepted and even encouraged by society. I'm thinking your attempt at shock and awe and putting themselves in other shoes, etc., etc. has failed because you're simply quoting S.O.P. for celebrities. _They_ know the rules.. the _real_ rules of privacy. Public is public, and privacy can never be assumed.
No free lunch (Score:2)
If you don't want me to decrypt your satellite feeds to get free TV then stop broadcasting it into my receiver on my property.
This argument becomes tiresome.
It was settled - legally - in the earliest days of radio, on the perfectly intelligible grounds that leeches undermined the funding of subscription services which might not otherwise be viable.
You were never entitled to freely tap into the water, power, sewer, and phone lines which might cross your property.
The carrier wave of the satellite broadcast f
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Tapping into water, power, sewer, and phone means making use of capacity that would otherwise be available to other users. It makes use of infrastructure that someone else owns and has the right to control access to. Decrypting a broadcast signal does not deprive other users of anything.
Beta? (Score:2, Funny)
Terrible summary, yellow journalism at its finest (Score:5, Informative)
operating a device — which 'may be placed in a vehicle' — in a 'sniffer' or 'monitor' mode and analyzing them on a server?
As scary as the poster tries to make this sound, this is how you listen for public access points. This post is a scare-mongering dupe.
Yellow journalism is getting to be awfully common here on Slashdot. For instance this troll of a story which just so happens to be from the same author:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/05/21/1427245 [slashdot.org]
WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hm, my netbook + car charger + linux + aircrack-ng does just that.
My archos media player can do likewise.
How can you patent this crap?
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There are some people who perceive an unlocked door as an "open door." This is simply not the case. A closed door needn't be locked to send the message that privacy may be desired. An open window is not an invitation for people to stare in from the outside, let alone climb into someone's home.
The point is, that even if it's not "locked down" and may even appear to be open, behaving this way in a residential area is tantamount to trespassing. The front door of a home may or may not be locked, but the act
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The point is, that even if it's not "locked down" and may even appear to be open, behaving this way in a residential area is tantamount to trespassing
Using someone's service to actually send and receive Internet traffic is a completely different situation from analyzing unencrypted data packets. As in significantly different legal standards apply. In this case, it is ridiculous to consider passively listening to unencrypted traffic to be "trespassing", any more than parking on the side of the street would
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"Weak encryption" was the excuse for DeCSS's being broken and yet we all agree that it was an eventuality that any encryption would have been broken eventually and, in fact, if it were stronger, it would have made the prize all the more enticing. "Unencrypted data" is therefore an open invitation?
As I said in my piss poor analogy, just because someone has an open window, it is not an invitation for anyone to look in!!! This "expectation of privacy" stance is nonsense as regardless of the technical merits
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"Unencrypted data" is therefore an open invitation?
I don't know where encryption works in to any of this, but yes. You broadcast unencrypted signals, you shouldn't be upset if someone has the gall to listen in.
And if you REALLY think your position is valid, I can only believe that everything you have is encrypted and that everything you do is hidden and that you are not vulnerable to anything.
My wireless network is encrypted. My personal files are on a system on my own network. None of this is open to the public. I have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I run some personal sites dedicated to various hobbies / interests. Some of that content is open to the public. It would be silly for me to get upset and claim those files are there
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Once again, would it be fair to exploit your lack of knowledge?
The bigger problem here is that not everyone knows enough about locking their stuff down and they never will. It is an unreasonable expectation.
At any given moment, your guard may be down even if most of the time it is not. Is it then okay to exploit you when your guard is down for any reason at all? This is the basic question at the core of this issue. "Is it okay to prey upon the ignorance of the masses?"
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Once again, would it be fair to exploit your lack of knowledge?
The bigger problem here is that not everyone knows enough about locking their stuff down and they never will. It is an unreasonable expectation.
No - it's not an unreasonable expectation. They may be surprised by how public they've been all along. I understand the feelings of shock and anger that can entail. But at the end of the day, the unreasonable expectation was that anything these people were doing in the clear on an unencrypted network was private.
At any given moment, your guard may be down even if most of the time it is not. Is it then okay to exploit you when your guard is down for any reason at all? This is the basic question at the core of this issue. "Is it okay to prey upon the ignorance of the masses?"
The very same systems I mentioned that Google spiders also contain controls that keep a certain amount of content private within said communities. If Google started running exploits against un-p
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The legal idea of a man in the middle attack with nation wide premeditated long term personal for profit data retention.
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Oh come on, this is ridiculous. (Score:3, Insightful)
The patent is for capturing the metadata and analyzing it. Guess what the Google van was supposed to do? That's right: capture the metadata, and analyze it. Nobody's disputing that, nobody ever has disputed that.
The accidental part is that it turns out they were capturing more than metadata. The patent doesn't talk about doing that, there's no evidence Google ever intended to do that, and it's difficult to determine what they could possibly gain from it anyway.
So, here, let's improve the headline.
"Google Has Pending Patent For Exactly The Process They Tried To Implement, But Slightly Screwed Up"
SHOCKING!
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What's interesting is that gubbermints are wanting to get their grubby paws on the data that Google accidentally pilfered, probably as a means of doing an end run around the 4th amendment and/or similiar laws in other countries.
Missing the point? (Score:1)
Google is full of it (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the original "by mistake" explanation they gave is a load of cr%p. How is it even possible to "collect WiFi information by mistake"? You have to install appropriate hardware and software, run it and then place the results to some sort of a database. Basic though it may be, someone had to do this, do this on all Google street view vehicles and keep it running. We are talking an effort of multiple people. There is absolutely nothing about it that's a mistake.
Now that they've been caught - they are resorting to bold faced lies.
Didn't have much trust in Google until now, but this has gone beyond anything acceptable.
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They aren't denying that the intentionally drove around and monitored for wireless access points and then logged information about the access points.
The part they say is a mistake is that they stored the payload from some of the packets that they captured. The payload might contain some interesting unencrypted data, but the chances of that are pretty slim. There really isn't much a business could use the information for.
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Recall how Tor was used to gain a few email pw of embassies in 1997?
Somebody put much effort and company cash into fitting many of the google data collection vehicles.
Supporting the wifi data collection long term on a wide scale is not 'free'.
Someone saw value in the packets longterm.
Or random workers to set up world wide spontaneous packet sniffing in Googles name and with company cash.
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Seriously? The vehicles were in a given location for a few minutes. They might have captured a few hundred kilobytes from a given router. The kilobytes are as likely to be some banal story about some skanky celebrity as they are to be anything else, and there is at least some chance that any private information is encrypted.
They absolutely were packet sniffing, but it's just retarded to insist that it is somehow useful information surveillance, they simply didn't capture enough data and there are too many e
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They can make mistakes on what part of the packet they sniffed.
A more accurate analogy would be going fishing for tuna and accidentally catching a dolphin.
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This is why another poster said that accidental would be if that had happened on one car in one city during a beta test.
Because after that, you look at the data you have gathered and discover your accident. Imho this should be discovered even before such a beta test, as any company that respects privacy should have internal audits set up that discover that kind of misconfiguration.
So, after Google went fishing f
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The difference here is that they actually intercepted data by mistake. If you use Kismet [kismetwireless.net] (probably the best wireless sniffing tool for Linux), you can set it to not save data packets, only beacon packets (which really have all the data that Google needs), but by default, it saves everything, including any data packets it sees (encrypted or unencrypted).
It depends on what you're doing what packets you want. If you're trying to break WEP, you only care about encrypted data packets; if you're just doing inno
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The difference here is that they actually intercepted data by mistake.
Do you work for Google and personally know everyone involved in collecting the data? If not, it is quite a big leap of faith to make that assertion.
If you use Kismet (probably the best wireless sniffing tool for Linux), you can set it to not save data packets, only beacon packets (which really have all the data that Google needs), but by default, it saves everything, including any data packets it sees (encrypted or unencrypted).
And are we also to believe that nobody noticed how fast the disks are filling up (geez, wouldn't you think they made an estimate on how much disk they need before the project started?), and everybody up and down the data processing chain did NOT notice the extra bulk of data when they analyze them? ("Gee! I expected only 200M per day, but I run through 2G of
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except that the wifi data is a drop in the bucket compared to the camera data... When they are collecting 10-100GB of image data, the variance in JPEG compression size of that data is probably more than all the WIFI data that they might have collected.
Are we to believe that the same processing steps are used to process both the camera data AND the wifi data, that they would not be separated (with appropriate markers correlating them) and processed by different processes? Isn't that common sense given that camera data (i.e. pictures) and wifi packets are wholly different type data and require different processing?
And are we to believe that everybody up and down the stream processing the wifi data won't notice the extra bulk of data coming in?
Come on, guy
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You clearly didn't read the full explanation.
They wanted to collect MAC addresses for Geolocation. Perfectly legal, totally useful, a boon to society.
They recycled code that someone had made for another purpose without carefully checking the data it was recording. They intentionally ran this software on every Google Streetview car for years, they did not intend for it to be collecting the extra data, but were unaware.
So they thought they were only collecting one type of data, but apparently collected 600
Misleading summary? (Score:4, Insightful)
But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets
The deal is that the patent describes capturing and analysing wireless data packets to extract the IP adress alongside GPS coordinates in order to enhance Google's IP geolocation accuracy. The "mistake" that they owned up to is actually dumping and storing all packets, not just the external IP address. Those are two different things.
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How about some prior art ??
http://wigle.net/gps/gps/main/download/ [wigle.net]
This has been running for years
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But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets
The deal is that the patent describes capturing and analysing wireless data packets to extract the IP adress alongside GPS coordinates in order to enhance Google's IP geolocation accuracy. The "mistake" that they owned up to is actually dumping and storing all packets, not just the external IP address. Those are two different things.
In fact, when the story broke out about wi-fi, I suspected it as much. They are sinifing all the IP packaets! To those who say, if you don't want it sniffed, then encypt it or it's on public property and everyone can sniff it or whatever, lets face it, not everyone has the ability to do that. And even if it's not encrypted, does not mean everyone has a right to read it. It's supposed to be my traffic. It's akin to llistening to my wireless calls by capturing wireless traffic that is supposed to be meant fo
wardriving (Score:2)
i realize that it may not be their intent to patent wardriving, but wouldn't that be covered by this?
I would classify this as 'EVIL' wouldn't you? (Score:1)
Google is redefining the word Evil as we speak. Someone like Kevin Mitnick would be serving time if they were caught doing this.
No. No, I would't. Not at all. (Score:3, Insightful)
They were sniffing OPEN, unencrypted networks. I don't think anyone should go to jail or even be sued for that. If you don't want people accessing your traffic, encrypt it. I mean, I could see the argument that if you used *any* kind of encryption, even WEP (which we all know is easily broken), then you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and if someone cracks the encryption, then they should be legally liable. But really, if you don't take any measures at all to protect your wireless network, then yo
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No, this is like using a long range mic to pick up private conversations.
Yes, if they want to have a "private" conversation, they should have it inside a sound proof room, just like Google cheerleaders like you insist everyone should use encryption to avoid this. Try telling that to grandma.
Google had to reverse itself (Score:2)
It became elgooG?
Germany's govt should do what's right.... (Score:1)
Seinfeld... (Score:1)
The lawsuits miss the point (Score:1)
a patent on evil. hmmm. business, take note. (Score:2)
if you are going to be evil, you will have to buy a license from Google.
Prior art (Score:2)
Raw packets (Score:1, Informative)
Here is a good technical description from a packet level:
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/05/technical-details-of-street-view-wifi.html [blogspot.com]
Don't worry, be complaliant... (Score:2)
Nah don't worry, Google is your friend, your lover, your new red bicycle.
Trust us. We are not evil.
Those who eschew Apple just b/c they are on top, or b/c of some perceived wrong doing, Google knows when, where, and what your search, whom you talk to, where you travel, and in some cases what you buy.
Sigh (Score:2)
When did Google "deny" this before "reversing themselves"? They were asked to turn over data by the Germans (who have an irrational fear of having pictures of their houses taken). They looked at it first, realized there was more there than they had been intending to collect and to their credit, rather than try to delete or hide it, they announced it and issued a mea culpa.
Anyways, there's apparently no new news for this story included in the summary, so why are reposting and reshashing old stuff? This is
Re:xmmm (Score:5, Informative)
There is no reading comprehension in the world, apparently. This patent is about what Google claims it was trying to do -- recording SSID and MAC information for location purposes. It has nothing to do with the "mistaken" data packets (sent unencrypted over the air). How the submitter connected the two, I don't know. I suspect lack of coffee and excess Google hate.
Re: (Score:2)
He's scaremongering, like he does 99% of the time.
The other 1% he just gets it totally wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how scaremongering and being wrong is mutually exclusive.
Re: (Score:1)
excess Google hate
Will it be OK for us to hate Google once they've proven absolutely and undeniably that they are are evil? Or is it OK to start sometime before then? IMHO, a "Surgeon General's warning" ought to placed on everything Google does.
You insensitive clod! (Score:5, Funny)
Whatyoutalkinbout, Willis?