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Comment by feral | Hacker News Reader

Whats the major problem with logging the location of a Wifi access point?

I understand Google screwed up in this area before, when they captured network traffic. (Even then, it seems they captured that data due to oversight, not some nefarious scheme.)

There are lots of huge privacy issues in the world; I don't think a database of approximate wifi locations ranks particularly highly. I don't care if Google map my hotspot, and I'm happy to have my phone locate quickly, when I'm out and about.

And they are now providing a way to opt-out, for the people that feel strongly about it; its not trivial to implement, but I can't think of a way of making it easier.

It seems a lot less complicated for an end-user than robots.txt is in the related scenario of web scraping.

That blog post is full of vitriol; I don't think its adding much constructive discussion, or insight; I think its just blowing things out of proportion.

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1. End users don't configure web servers 2. Since when is "it's too hard" an acceptable solution for HN or Google?

Have you ever tried to tell someone nontechnical how to reboot their router over the phone?

"Just unplug it and plug it back in" "Unplug what?" "The router - the thing with the network cables in it" "The one with the tv cable?" etc.

Now try to tell them how to reconfigure their SSID, and then reconfigure all their connected devices to match.

Exactly. Useless solution for the majority. But who gives a shit anyway? In tech it's hard to decide what's good for you and what not. Privacy is nothing trivial anymore. You are out there or you live in a forest without any technical device at all.

> You are out there or you live in a forest

What he said. At some point, if people want to eat, they need to belly up to the big table called society. The Enlightenment came with great discussion of the social contract for good reason. Opting out of the social contract is a hard problem. Even the guy in the forest was born to a mother. Even the orphan depends on someone to survive the first years of life. Anyone who can formulate solid arguments got an education that someone provided and paid for.

You're router is a flashlight shining in the GHz range. If it was in the visible range, your neighbors would get an injunction because it would keep them up at night.

Not to mention firmware updates or reset-ing the router back to factory default and forgot to do whatever Google suggested you to do.

Suddenly it becomes a burden.

So, Google could be forced to not gather this information at all.

Whether its in the public interest is a tradeoff between the utility provided vs the privacy loss. I think its a net utility gain - I like my phone to resolve quickly, and see little downside - so I have no general objection.

Some people might object strenuously to this information being gathered; they now have a mechanism - albeit kludgey - to opt-out.

Could the opt-out be implemented better?

You say you don't accept 'its too hard' as an excuse. But sometimes there's a limit to how well a problem can be solved, given its importance and the set of people who care about it. You could build a physical switch on the router (perhaps even one that appends '_nomap' to the SSID). But we don't expect Google to ship everyone a new router, right?

If there's ever sufficient consumer demand, router manufacturers could add this feature. But there probably isn't going to be.

We live in a world where Telcos track and log our locations, to a resolution of the nearest cell, or nearer, all the time. They typically have our identity and demographic information. They know who we call and message, and for how long. I'm studying social network analysis, and you can infer an awful lot from data like this.

So, how do I turn my phone on 'do not track' mode?

I think its pretty decent of Google to enable this feature; yes, the solution is inelegant, but the people that care enough about this can probably figure out how to enable it.

I think anger about privacy violations should be directed at worse offenders.

Maybe it would be better to have people who don't mind it opt-in rather than expecting people to opt-out of something they might not even know they're in.

"...anger about privacy violations should be directed at worse offenders."

No, it should be directed at every offender.

> Maybe it would be better to have people who don't mind it opt-in rather than expecting people to opt-out of something they might not even know they're in.

No, because it will render this service useless, as almost no one will know or care about it. Sad truth, but you can't have 'opt-in' for everything if you actually want to accomplish something.

If I'm using a mobile hotspot, it would be useless to log its location. Anyway, maybe I just don't want my home router on a Google map.

It's not like they're breaking into your house and stealing private information. Your router is broadcasting your SSID.

Yeah but locally, not to the whole internet.

Doesn't the phone have to be local to the AP in order to get the MAC to send to Google for the location?

Google doesn't broadcast it to the whole internet either: they just use its position for clients which happen to be near your AP.

It's an invasion of the privacy of the owners of said access point because they neither asked not intended for their SSID and location to be put into Google's database.

It's as simple as that. In most Western countries, a citizens right to determine what happens with information about them is considered a fundamental right. The fact that the information is publicly available and easy to collect does in no way diminish that right.

It's what is done with that information what matters. And no owner of a WiFi access point ever intended their SSID to end up in Google's databases, and especially not related to their geographical location.

It crosses an ethical and possibly legal line that may not be recognized in the US, but is pretty plain and solid in many other countries. And these aren't technologically clueless countries: net neutrality is the law in the Netherlands.

Google knows all of this, and yet chooses to publicly tell these countries to go fuck themselves. Smooth move.

That's simply not true.

1) Just because you never ask or intend for that, doesn't mean that's your right: TV channels don't have to ask each person that passes on the street and happens to be filmed for authorization. There's a thing called expectation of privacy.

2) Google, at least in some countries, did in fact request permission from the appropriate bodies: here in Portugal we have a "National Commission for Data Protection" and they did authorize Google to collect that data and even to photograph the streets.

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