WiFi data collection: An update | Hacker News Reader

WiFi data collection: An update

googleblog.blogspot.com

61 pointstshtf21 comments

They seem to be behaving like a good citizen here.

Although only tangentially related, in the same blog post they said the following, which I found to be exciting news: "next week we will start offering an encrypted version of Google Search"

> They seem to be behaving like a good citizen here.

They didn't look into the issue until forced by a (German) government investigation and then denied wrongdoing by claiming it was an "accident". How would a bad citizen have behaved?

Based on their fairly extensive explanation, this actually seems like an accident to me, so I don't see the need for scare quotes. Do you not agree? I would like to better understand the alternative point of view.

The alternative is why in the first place, for three full years, they recorded wifi traffic? Who coded this function? What does the function do with the data? Where do they store that information? For how long do they keep it? Where did they do this, worldwide?

When their car is stopped at a traffic light for a minute, does it stop recording wifi traffic? I'm hoping it's illegal in the US to wiretap a phone, so how does this compare?

They recorded beacons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_frame) for the purpose of mapping access point MAC addresses to locations (several other companies such as Skyhook also do this BTW). But it sounds like they accidentally logged all packets, not just beacons.

Since we are in hypothetical conjecture land, I'll give a guess:

My guess is that the code was originally written for a completely different purpose. When they decided to start gather wifi data, somebody said, "Hey, I think Bob wrote something like that. Maybe we can use it."

Next came a quick rush to get the thing into their street view cars without doing a deep analysis on the code.

And, yes, wiretapping without a search warrant. Electronic communications don't generally fall under the same laws as far as I know (IANAL!).

Is anyone else not terribly concerned about this? I wonder if this isn't an overreaction: I suspect I'd rather Google keep collecting wireless data and improving its location services. I'm vastly more concerned about, say, what Google is or isn't doing with my Google searches, my Google Reader behavior, my Gmail accounts...

On another forum I hang out there was a great long discussion about this when it surface - I was about the only one who thought it wasn't too massive an issue.

So there is concern out there; I'm glad they are being open about it. One less for the conspiracy theorists :)

Id say more "score one for the regulators". At least in one country. Without them this (and presumably other things) would not have been caught.

It isn't a big deal. The question is, why is Google seemingly making such a big effort on this front, when they're dismissing other concerns (like what they're doing with your searches) as not a big deal?

I mean, I'm not one who's particularly nuts about Google and privacy -- we've known they're in the data mining business all along, anyway. This just smells very strongly of a PR move.

I agree. It is probably an attempt to mitigate damage that would happen when the regulators announce their findings.

This 'issue' is beyond trivial - at the speed the Street View car is moving and the rate at which they hop wifi channels, they're unlikely to capture more than a couple of packets.

The fact that they bothered to respond says a great deal IMO about Google's priorities.

Also interested at the bottom of the blog: """and next week we will start offering an encrypted version of Google Search"""

Pretty big shift on their end to go within 1 year from very few services being over HTTPS/SSL to offering most major services over it.

They screwed up, admittedly. On the other hand, getting 0.2 seconds of open wifi hotspot data is most likely a lot more embarrassing for Google than any of the wifi-users affected.

This seems like an overreaction, but I think they probably know that, and still like the PR value of the reaction.

Frankly, of all the entities out there with the means to listen to wifi signals in bulk, google is amongst the less intimidating.

Good example of how to handle a screw-up. Well put.

Summary: On April 27 that said they we not collection wifi network data traffic. That was incorrect. They were but only unencrypted network data traffic and it was changing channels 5 times a second. So, they didn't get much.

End result -- they are stopping the collection of WiFi network data entirely.

Overreaction or Opportunistic?

Considering the kind of attention Facebook has been getting, companies in the tech space who can differentiate themselves not only magnify the amount of trust they build, but also will afford itself greater protection against something like a congressional investigation on the broader industry's privacy/security standards.

I'd call this a business savvy move.

Better idea would be to inform people somehow that they are running insecure wireless. I'm sure the vast majority of people have no idea there doing so and these days probably getting their internet leached by neighbours.

That's an interesting idea, but I can think of no way to do that without a door-to-door campaign.

This is the exact post I would make if I was recording peoples wifi data and then was about to get audited...

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