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If I were spending millions of dollars sending cars + drivers out on every street in the world I would want to collect as much data as possible. I imagine they
by yellowbkpk 16y ago
If I were spending millions of dollars sending cars + drivers out on every street in the world I would want to collect as much data as possible. I imagine they had cell radios, wifi radios, probably even FM and AM radios all collecting data in conjunction with highly-accurate GPS readings.
If their software to collect WiFi signal strength was based on a packet capture system (perhaps by interfacing with Wireshark or one of its libraries), I could see how it might be a mistake to save this data while attempting to collect other data.
However, I imagine that they simply wanted to collect as much data as possible, including WiFi traffic (that should really be considered public, anyway...).
- weego 16y agoIf I were going on holiday or on business to a city, it would be incredibly useful if I could see a public/free wifi overlay (showing the radius of a decent strength signal) on top of the city map. The only way to do that of course would be to scan and record all available wifi networks at every step and then group the signals based on the ssid. That will obviously hit all networks, but if it cant access anything what is the problem? If the ssid is visible and your network is available then everyone with a wifi card is doing what Google did every time they turn their laptop or smartphone on anyway.
- jcl 16y agoIt's one thing to record the signatures of open wireless networks in a given location. But, from what I hear, Google was also recording the payloads of the packets it intercepted. I can understand people being upset by this, especially if carried out on a large scale.
- jacquesm 16y agoPrivacy laws are applicable to companies storing data, not on individuals that incidentally use someone's open network. Also, they weren't just scanning for availability and signal strength, they were snooping the traffic and saving it.
- natrius 16y ago> If the ssid is visible and your network is available then everyone with a wifi card is doing what Google did every time they turn their laptop or smartphone on anyway. That's not true. Unless the card is in promiscuous mode, packets intended for other machines will be discarded. Even if other cards were in promiscuous mode, they'd still have to intentionally save the packets to approach what Google did.
- nanairo 16y agoHey, nobody is arguing they shouldn't try to save some dollars... just that if they were going to gather more data than originally planned, they could have told us. Moreover, if it was just economic sense, and hence it was done on purpose, then it would have been nice if they hadn't lied when prosecutors asked them. I don't think it's that much to ask.