4 ms·

EDIT: WHOOPS! Retracted. See mattmanser's reply. While the wording of the statute is certainly problematic, this assertion by the judge is, I would argue, mi

EDIT: WHOOPS! Retracted. See mattmanser's reply. While the wording of the statute is certainly problematic, this assertion by the judge is, I would argue, mistaken (p. 3): In order to view the contents of the data packets captured by the wireless sniffer in a readable form, the packets must be stored on digital media and then decoded using crypto-analysis or a similarly complicated technology. [...] As such, the data packets are not readable by the general public absent this sophisticated decoding and processing technology. He seems to be confused about the fact that Wi-Fi networks may or may not use encryption; he's assuming they always do, when in fact the networks from which Google was gathering information were only the open ones, i.e. those not using encryption. In fact I'm sure there are generally available apps -- maybe even for cell phones! -- that allow one to collect the same information. (If there aren't, they could certainly be written easily enough.) Surely this makes it "readable by the general public".

ScottBurson 15y ago
The other thing to remember here is that this is not anything close to a final ruling against Google; the judge simply declined to dismiss all the charges that Google was moving to dismiss (he did dismiss two out of three). The result is simply that the remaining charge can go to trial.
mattmanser 15y ago
No, you've made a mistake. That's taken from the Plaintiff's allegation and the judge didn't write that. Check the top of page 2: Plaintiffs allege as follows: then everything indented is from the Plaintiff's claim including your quote. Plaintiff's claim finishes page 4. Also note the final judgement at the end of the whole thing, Judge dismisses in favour of Google on two parts of their motion. Just to highlight this is a complicated judgement.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  This made me read more... See page 20, line 10 and read onwards, the Judge clearly understands the difference. And further to that the Judge specifically calls out the underlying basis behind your objection and saying it's misplaced. (page 21, line 8) On another note, I had no idea but this would seem that the Judge is saying that if you are caught running wireshark with your network card on promiscuous setting in a public wifi you are wire tapping. It's fine to connect to the network, just not listen to other people's packets. Which seemed totally outrageous when I first realized it, then totally made sense the more I thought about it. After all, phone cables are publicly accessible, it's fine to use them for your phone calls, moment you hook up a physical wiretap to the publicly accessible telephone lines, boom, you're wiretapping.
deleted 15y ago
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ScottBurson 15y ago

The other thing to remember here is that this is not anything close to a final ruling against Google; the judge simply declined to dismiss all the charges that Google was moving to dismiss (he did dismiss two out of three). The result is simply that the remaining charge can go to trial.

mattmanser 15y ago

No, you've made a mistake. That's taken from the Plaintiff's allegation and the judge didn't write that. Check the top of page 2: Plaintiffs allege as follows: then everything indented is from the Plaintiff's claim including your quote. Plaintiff's claim finishes page 4. Also note the final judgement at the end of the whole thing, Judge dismisses in favour of Google on two parts of their motion. Just to highlight this is a complicated judgement.

mattmanser 15y ago
This made me read more... See page 20, line 10 and read onwards, the Judge clearly understands the difference. And further to that the Judge specifically calls out the underlying basis behind your objection and saying it's misplaced. (page 21, line 8) On another note, I had no idea but this would seem that the Judge is saying that if you are caught running wireshark with your network card on promiscuous setting in a public wifi you are wire tapping. It's fine to connect to the network, just not listen to other people's packets. Which seemed totally outrageous when I first realized it, then totally made sense the more I thought about it. After all, phone cables are publicly accessible, it's fine to use them for your phone calls, moment you hook up a physical wiretap to the publicly accessible telephone lines, boom, you're wiretapping.

deleted 15y ago

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