I find this pretty interesting...
Google may face prosecution over Wi-Fi data
This is going to be a fascinating case if all 30 countries involved decide to prosecute.
Google may face prosecution over Wi-Fi data
Quote:
| Technical details revealed in a Google audit could see the company face criminal prosecution around the world for collecting private Wi-Fi data, a British privacy organisation said. Privacy International said it had examined an independent audit supplied by Google and believed that details from the report reveal criminal intent and placed the company at risk of "prosecution in almost all the 30 jurisdictions in which the system was used". Google admitted last month to collecting 600GB of data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in 30 countries while out taking photographs for its Street View mapping service. Google said the independent audit of its data collection practices had been conducted by security consulting firm Stroz Friedberg and sent to the interested data protection authorities today. "In short, it confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted," the company wrote on its blog. However Privacy International said the audit report revealed a level of intent to gather data. "The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the Wi-Fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation," it said. The organisation claimed the data collection went well beyond the "mistake" that has been cited by Google. |
