"It's never the offence; it's the cover-up. And if there's one thing that the last few years have taught us, it's that the suggestion of a 'rogue' worker having acted alone to do something which led to an intrusion is never correct. There has to be a failure of management oversight as well. That's why Google is in such hot water now over the revelations contained in the Federal Communications Commission report into what went wrong with its Street View Wi-Fi data collection program." What a total and utter surprise: company does bad stuff, tries to cover it up. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who grasps that companies - they are not to be trusted. This really isn't rocket science, people.
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Member since:2006-09-01
If my neighbors can here me yelling in my house in their house, they can call the cops for disturbing the peace, and the cops can come out and tell me to quit yelling.
If my neighbors have no problem with the noise, they don't have to do anything.
Most neighbors operate one of those two principles, and that goes for wireless networks as well.
In this scenario, Google bought a bunch of surveillance equipment, when into a neighborhood, and was recording conversations people were having regardless of volume.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Staff-Knew-Street-View-Car...
"the full report on the Federal Communications Commission’s investigation, released by Google over the weekend, found that the engineer told at least two other colleagues in 2007 that personal data—including emails, text messages, passwords and users’ Internet usage histories—was being collected along with other WiFi information as part of the search giant’s Street View efforts."
"“Google made clear for the first time that Engineer Doe’s software was deliberately written to capture payload data,” the FCC said in its 25-page report, issued April 13, though heavily redacted."
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1866267/google_street_view_...
"According to a Google spokesperson, about 600 gigabytes of personal information had been gathered."
You don't need to do that for wardriving regardless of the security on the AP.
Edited 2012-05-04 20:23 UTC
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Member since:
2009-07-18
They didn't connect, they just received and stored data that was broadcast to them [for a few seconds].
If you're inside your house and you shout loud enough that your neighbours can hear you, then that's not their fault, is it? They don't have to set up a conversation (connection) to hear what you're saying.
Either put on your tinfoil hat and completely shield your house, turn off wifi connections or simply encrypt your traffic.
That aside, Google's reaction strikes me as a bit odd though, considering they reported the incident to the authorities in the first place.
Edited 2012-05-03 15:59 UTC