The BBC is reporting , along with USA Today, that Google is going to be sued in the USA over snooping, rejecting the appeal from Google to dismiss legal action accusing it of breaking privacy laws. From the article:
Google must face a class action lawsuit alleging the Internet giant violated federal wiretap law when its Street View vehicles collected data from private Wi-Fi networks. The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would not consider Google's challenge to the class action lawsuit.
The federal Wiretap Act bans the interception of electronic communications. Google had argued that it was not illegal to collect radio communications or any "form of electronic communication readily accessible to the general public".
But a San Francisco federal judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not agree and refused to dismiss the class action. The class action was filed on behalf of individuals whose information was collected from unsecured Wi-Fi networks when Google's Street View cars rode past unsuspecting households.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday July 01 2014, @03:55PM
What Google did may be morally wrong (when did they drop "do no evil"), but how are the plaintiffs going to prove damages? What did anyone lose other than the false sense of privacy they may have held.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday July 01 2014, @04:07PM
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(Score: 2) by Leebert on Tuesday July 01 2014, @04:17PM
Because it was an accident?
Read http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html [blogspot.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday July 01 2014, @08:20PM
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(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday July 01 2014, @04:24PM
Seriously, do we need to refresh your memory about this yet AGAIN?
This is the SAME street view flap that happened years ago, and Google has already explained that the data was collected and recorded because one engineer forgot to add filtering to the standard airsnort software that they were using to pick up WIFI beacons.
No use was ever made of the data, or intended to be made, and google already paid the fines, and nobody's data was made public*. Nobody can prove that their data was compromised.
Its the SAME SHIT DIFFERENT DAY.
* the only time the data made it into public hands was when various governments demanded it. If they subsequently turned it over to the general public those governments should be sued. Google has already paid their fine.
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(Score: 1) by present_arms on Tuesday July 01 2014, @04:46PM
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:31PM
But then google would have had to thumb its nose at federal and state subpoenas as well as those from countless other countries.
If anything this has taught Google that it does not pay to play by the rules. Once they discovered that they had accidentally collected this data they should have immeiately purged every copy of it, started an internal search to make sure there were no copies lurking on backup tapes, THEN and only THEN, issued a public declaration and appology, stating that they purged the data per their stated privacy policy.
As is stands, no good deed goes unpunished.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:53PM
Doesn't matter. Google, a company that makes its money by snooping on people, was busted capturing data and the public is saying "nope!" Their motives are suspect and they should not have been capturing it in the first place, accidentally or not.
"Google has already paid their fine."
To the government, not to the people they collected data on.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 01 2014, @10:31PM
A company that steps away from the "do not be evil" and have massive monetary incentive. And can be and is served with NSL. They simple lost the benefit of doubt. It may be a completely innocent mistake but how can we know?
It's the same as with the story of smartphones and truecrypt etc. We don't believe. We want audited proof or else it will be seen as untrustworthy. That binary NVidia blob and Intel silicon can be spying for all I know.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 02 2014, @02:02AM
Well, hence, the title of this subthread.
Private citizens don't get to prosecute on behalf of the state to enforce laws.
Private citizens need to prove they were damaged.
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(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02 2014, @02:12AM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @11:49AM
Yes, there could be a law to break even if no damage were able to be caused that way. Laws don't have to be reasonable to be passed.
However, just because it is possible for damage to be caused by what Google did, that doesn't mean there actually was any damage caused by it.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02 2014, @03:56PM
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 02 2014, @05:17PM
Its actually never been determined if there is in fact any law in the US that prohibit what google did. And once again: Google did not TRY to grab it.
They collected it accidentally, while trying to record WIFI beacons. They accidentally recorded snippets of unencrypted data as well as the beacons.
Its a stretch to suggest that wiretapping laws apply to broadcast of unencrypted radio transmissions. This has never been proven in court.
And yes, there is no value in the data accidentally collected, because you get a snippet here and there of random packets that happened to be part of non ssl streams.
But more to the point, even if someone happened to collect a fragment of a message of unencrypted email (who connects to email without ssl), and this data is kept on tape till purged and nobody saw it, THERE IS NO PROVABLE DAMAGE to the wifi user.
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(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02 2014, @05:39PM
So there's no value, but if we take them at their word they caught the misdeed, admitted to it, and 'deleted it with a third party present' because... well the data is nothing. Right.
"THERE IS NO PROVABLE DAMAGE to the wifi user."
None of the governments involved, including the US, agree with you.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 02 2014, @06:57PM
Actually they DO agree with me.
If they didn't, they would order google to pay money to each person who had data slurped.
In many cases Google has just paid off governments to make the problem go away and avoid costly trials, even if there were no identifiable statutes that were violated.
Google has never been convicted of violating any specific law in the US with regard to this incident.
Even the current ruling of civil liability does not indicate that there was criminal liability.
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(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02 2014, @07:14PM
No... they'd pay a fine... just like they actually did.
"Google has never been convicted of violating any specific law in the US with regard to this incident."
They haven't been found not-guilty, either. Though they have admitted they weren't supposed to be doing that, tsk tsk.
"Even the current ruling of civil liability does not indicate that there was criminal liability."
It's almost as if we would need some sort of impartial third party to judge the liability of Google's actions. Time to put on your best suit!
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 02 2014, @10:36PM
Never having been found guilty is the perfect definition of Not Guilty.
Tork, stop being a dick. I know you made it out of the 7th grade where you learned this stuff.
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(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02 2014, @11:00PM
Umm... No. Heh. There weren't any charges brought so neither guilt or not-guilt has been ascertained. We're on the victims' side of it here, now, as opposed to just being about law-breakage. (You really seem to have a hard time with this concept.) They took the data and just because they were caught doesn't mean no damage was done.
"Tork, stop being a dick. I know you made it out of the 7th grade where you learned this stuff."
Frojack, stop being a Google Apologist. You're so quick to take what they're saying at face value that you're willing to forgive a violation of your trust even though their entire business model is about cashing in your privacy. This has ramifications for what they did and for what they will do, you can't just hand-wave it away because they posted on a blog that they're so so sorry for collecting information they'd very much like to have on you.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 02 2014, @11:40PM
Guilt is a legal finding.
Therefor unless you have been found guilty, you are not guilty.
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(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02 2014, @11:56PM
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(Score: 2) by everdred on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:05PM
> when did they drop "do no evil"
They've never heard of it. Because it's actually "Don't be evil" [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by Alfred on Tuesday July 01 2014, @04:04PM
the amazingly timed poll finishes
http://soylentnews.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=30&aid=-1 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lagg on Tuesday July 01 2014, @04:45PM
This is such a dead horse right now and was just an excuse for sensationalism when it happened. What google did during their silly little wardrive-lite is equivalent to what my cellphone, laptop and wifi dongle does all the time. They deserve more scrutiny and have been real assholes lately about various things. But this is not one of them and it only serves to weaken legit arguments. It also doesn't do much to dismiss that "litigious 'murikan" stereotype.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:08PM
Wish I had mod points for you. A thousand times yes.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:13PM
Using free/open wifi is wiretapping now? This never should have made it to court. Even if google knew of and was connected to every open access point in the world, it would be legal.
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(Score: 1) by present_arms on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:27PM
Going to play devils advocate here, isn't snooping on open wifi the same as somebody coming and snooping around my home because my front door is unlocked?
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:37PM
This has been argued adinfinitum years ago on the green site as well as every tech site on the web.
Once again, the answer is NO:
Its more akin to you keeping all of your stuff out on the lawn and in the public street, and then suing anybody who even briefly glanced in the direction of your pile of soiled boxer shorts.
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(Score: 2, Funny) by present_arms on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:13PM
agreed as I said I was just playing devils advocate to get the discussion moving :)
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday July 01 2014, @08:11PM
FTFY.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01 2014, @06:52PM
It's more like standing on the street and looking into your open window and seeing something because you didn't have curtains / blinds on the window.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 01 2014, @05:44PM
Its worse than that. Since your wifi is always listening for wifi hot spots, and can not help but pick up other snippits of information while doing so. Even if you never have your phone associate with that router.
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(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:12PM
Google seems to be treated differently from the NSA. They too say it's OK because they never looked at the data without a warrant.
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Tuesday July 01 2014, @07:22PM
One law for them and another for the rest of us. Seems to have been the way since money was invented.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday July 01 2014, @10:35PM
It's been that way since some people had more power than others.