Who would really need that sort of information? I understand how this can be useful at the mall but I think I can find my way around my own house thank you.
I don't know the answer to that question, but I have a guess at the answer to another question: "is it okay for a private company to create a geodatabase of SSID strings that were freely and willingly broadcast via radio?"
I think the answer is "yes". Ten, fifteen years ago, if there were an HN story about how I, owner of a small business you've never heard of, created a database of SSIDs that are broadcast and tagged them with lat/longs, I'd bet money it would make the top of the front page. Bonus points if I included an API and threw the thing up on github.
Fine, it's evil, append "_nomap" to your SSID string. That's fine for stopping Google, but it won't stop "owner of small business you've never heard of". Don't broad SSIDs, but then (IIRC) one can still obtain the MAC address.
But in the end, if a radio broadcasts something then one has little recourse when receivers use that broadcast in ways you didn't intend. The analogy crumbles under a little scrutiny, but it's similar to FM broadcasters complain about geodatabases of FM towers because the intent of the broadcaster was to allow you to listen to drive-time hyenas, not use it for location services.
=> https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3g3xyu/for_wifi_ms...
Additionally, I don't buy that to begin with, at least not as it concerns the majority. Where do folks think those other SSIDs (even if they don't call them that) in their list of networks come from?
minimum standards of knowledge required for the citizens
The level of IMO required knowledge I'm talking about here is to know e.g. that water in your faucet is distributed through the building via water pipes, and electricity comes through cables that are inside walls. Even this basic knowledge allows one to infer quite a lot.
Using your analogy it would be sufficient for a person to know how to handle electricity coming from your wall or the plumbing under your house safely. And generally people do know how to do that.
Everyone who is regularly using WiFi networks knows that he/she can see the names of other WiFi networks in their vicinity. Therefore people using WiFi generally do know that this information is publicly broadcasted and available to be collected by anyone interested in doing so.
No one believes that he is the only person being able to somehow magically see the name of his neighbours WiFi.
http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...
Frankly I don't care for the matter at hand about the perception and understanding of the Internet that people from a different culture might have just as I do not care about the Saudi perspective on women's and LGBT rights. We are discussing here what should be the standard in our societies.
This should be opt-in by default in sane universe, not opt-out.
OTOH, to the extent this is not true, its ISPs and router manufacturers who are at fault.
Broadcasting is, inherently, sharing location with everyone with a receiver.
> Who the fuck do they think they are?
People with receivers (see above.)
I don't know what to tell you other than "I don't like the way I feel about this" is not the basis of good policy.
If they don’t want to be seen, they can just stop broadcasting their face and wear a burqa, right?
There is a huge difference between "publicly available in every case seperately" and "publicly indexable".
EDIT: Instead of downvoting, please leave a comment instead – do you disagree because you believe there’s a fundamental difference between gigahertz and terahertz light waves? Or is there another reason you disagree?
The possibilities of human behavior are infinite. We don't need to and can't enumerate all possible bad behaviors as illegal. Thus the civil court system.
On the second thought, I think there's some law against publishing images of people without their consent in some circumstances. I'm not clear on exactly what is allowed, but I know that TV broadcasters post notices in places that they are filming.
A restraining order is issued for either actually illegal activity, or for activity whose legal status is in dispute, and which would irreparably negatively impact a party in the case in which it that status was in dispute, or for activity which might straddle the line of legality but which is related to a broader pattern of activity which was found to be illegal.
Its not done for specifically legal activity.
> The possibilities of human behavior are infinite. We don't need and can't enumerate all possible bad behaviors as illegal. Thus the civil court system.
The civil court system is for addressing things which are illegal -- violations of the law -- but which are not violation of criminal law. The civil court system applies those things prohibited in civil law, it does not substitute for having laws to determine what is prohibited.
The subset of restraining orders (sometimes called "protective" orders) you are thinking of are available when something illegal has been done, and relate to patterns of activity related to that illegal thing. For California, there are several kinds [0] of such orders:
(1) Domestic Violence Restraining Order: available if someone close to you in specific ways defined in law has abused you in specific ways defined in law as acts of domestic violence.
(2) Elder or Dependent Adult Abuse Restraining Order: available if you are elderly or disabled and have been a victim of certain kinds of abuse.
(3) Civil Harassment Restraining Order: available if you are being harassed or stalked, etc., by someone not close enough to be covered by a domestic violence restraining order.
(4) Workplace Violence Restraining Order: available to an employer to protect an employee that has been a victim of stalking, harassment, violence, or serious threats.
Now, yes, they sometimes cover acts which would not otherwise be illegal, but they actual require something illegal to have happened as their basis (a temporary restraining order can be issued on the claim that such a thing has occurred, and a permanent restraining order only after a hearing to determine that.)
Or putting video surveillance up in public spaces. Also illegal, even for the government.
Or whatever.
Collect the router mac and BSSID? Possibly justifiable. That's like making a map where phone numbers are, physically.
But collecting the SSID?
Looking at the wifi list, I see "Meier family WiFi" and "Meier WiFi upper floor: Finn & Jan" (that's their children, having both the room on the upper floor, and family protection filters enabled for that WiFi).
I see WiFi names that are identifiable, somes that have a little poetry in them, others named as the favourite football club of their owners.
That's creative work and PII.
How is that illegal? That's called a map.
Appealing to child stalking as a way to emotionally charge your argument about radio reception is a disingenuous tactic for this conversation. What's more, people who actually work to promote and secure a safer environment for kids don't need people like you constantly exacerbating parental paranoia with a constant back chatter stranger danger.
Please refrain from emotionally manipulative rhetoric.
Or anything else that's that personal.
The point isn't about what is collected, but that this type of broad data collection exists in the first place.
Let's recap: not eventhe government can do video surveillance of public places, streetview became opt in, the phone book is opt in.
But Google collects SSIDs?
Collecting only the router mac or BSSID might possibly be justifiable, because it's just a map of technical data, but collecting a string where people but creative works in, or names, or jokes?
I've seen families where the WiFi for the first floor had another name than that for the ground floor — specifically, the names of their two children, whose room was on first floor.
Collecting such PII can be problematic.
No. That's not my job to arbitrarily re-interpret what you said to give you a free pass for your disingenuous rhetoric.
> Let's recap: not eventhe government can do video surveillance of public places, streetview became opt in, the phone book is opt in.
The government CAN do video surveillance though. Both our governments do it. What varies is how its deployed and who has access.
> Collecting only the router mac or BSSID might possibly be justifiable, because it's just a map of technical data, but collecting a string where people but creative works in, or names, or jokes?
Look, responsibility has to be exercised in all forms of data collection. But it's also the case that the light that shines out of your house is subject to public interpretation. Standing nude in your window facing a crowded street CAN be illegal in both our countries, as could placing a sign that says threatening things to passerbys. The trigger conditions for this vary between our countries, but they exist in both cases.
> Collecting such PII can be problematic.
COLLECTING PII is seldom the problem. Storing it or promptly and thoroughly deleting it is the challenge. You might argue that you shouldn't have collected it in the first place, and maybe that's true. But given the modern world where we have a rapidly expanding frontier of data analytics, it's actually difficult for real (re: not rhetorical trashbag arguments on HackerNews) people. Often times it's not obvious what PII is until later.
For example, there are people who claim that transactional data can be "anonymized". Do not believe these people; it is nearly impossible to anonymize transactional data. Even mixing users and attempting to delocalize vendor strings will not fix the problems.
But they literally can not at any point ever do it. Video surveillance of public space is a crime, even for the police, government, or security agencies, and it does not happen.
> COLLECTING PII is seldom the problem. Storing it or promptly and thoroughly deleting it is the challenge. You might argue that you shouldn't have collected it in the first place, and maybe that's true. But given the modern world where we have a rapidly expanding frontier of data analytics, it's actually difficult for real (re: not rhetorical trashbag arguments on HackerNews) people. Often times it's not obvious what PII is until later.
The law literally makes that a crime. You have to stop collection of PII, not just delete it at any later point.
Surveillance of public environments via the private security systems is how your government (and ours really) accomplishes this "legally."
> The law literally makes that a crime. You have to stop collection of PII, not just delete it at any later point.
The law's definition of PII in your country is woefully out of date. Same in mine.
There is no such established pattern where we can reasonably assume that a company collecting SSIDs will usually do this to act in a criminal way.
By the way I didn't down vote you, but I think this is the "common sense" reason why people reject your position.
You can't publicly index newspaper articles that are already decades old and irrelevant, you can't publicly index photos of buildings, you can't publicly index the names of people even.
Every of these things requires written approval of everyone listed, be it StreetView, the application of the Right to be Forgotten, or collecting WiFi SSIDs.
So the question is: why does everything require approval, except for SSIDs?
I wouldn't be surprised if there were in fact laws against this kind of public surveillance behavior in some jurisdictions in the United States.