Google stops deleting your personal data

Originally posted by Phage
It's not too hard to let each other know what the password is, is it?

Whatever is sent can be collected and stored. The password is useless.

You've only shown how naive people, like you, can get with this false sense of security.

I can see why Google started to delete everything they collected.

Originally posted by Dumbass
reply to post by dzonatas

 

I'm sorry to cut in again, but the only legal free(-intended) connections I know are not civilian-based.

For single sample: 375,000 civilians use one in San Francisco

It's legal. It's free. You can even buy special equipment to add features to help share the network.

Mesh networks are an old concept.

reply to post by dzonatas

Yes, WEP encryption is easily circumvented but it's better than nothing. It prevents casual leaching among other things. I don't use WEP. I don't know why anyone would, there are better encryption schemes. I also don't know why anyone would not use any security at all in a private network.

Google was not hacking. The data collection was accidental. Even a WEP password would have prevented it from happening.


[edit on 5/21/2010 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
Google was not hacking. The data collection was accidental. Even a WEP password would have prevented it from happening.

In a way, you just contradicted yourself because you said: "Oh, I see, you want to steal from your neighbor's connection" based on being able to have an open connection. Is it "stealing" or is it "accidental?" Maybe you just intentionally misread what I wrote.

Whatever intention, didn't you miss the point? No matter how much you say google didn't hack the data, it's 3 years worth of data collected (that's a lot of information) over 30 countries...

...google stops deleting it...

...and now the government wants it.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by dzonatas]

reply to post by dzonatas


Too bad we don't have that here, would be nice though. We only got paid services, if legally . Accept for restaurants trainstations etc.I just looked in your example and what they give on security is this:

The company provides the same level of wireless security as other open wireless access points (e.g. wireless hotspots in airports or hotels, home networks, coffee shops). The network is based on the IEEE 802.11b/g standard for wireless local area networks (WLANs). WLANs, which enable "over-the-air" communications, may be subject to unauthorized interception and are not inherently secure. We cannot guarantee the privacy of your data and communications while using Free the Net. We strongly recommend you practice safe Internet usage when using any wireless network:

•When sending or receiving private or sensitive information on the web, e.g. for Internet banking, be sure to verify that everything is done over a secure, encrypted tunnel such as SSL (https:// will appear in the url rather than http://).
•Use only trusted websites
We support most customer provided security solutions such as virtual private networks (VPNs), personal firewalls and anti-virus software. We encourage all of our users to use such software and keep it up-to-date.

source same as above by dzonatas

But If you don't have a repeater, it would be just the same as another paid, incoming wifi connection. But if you do have a repeater you have a "company owned" device right? You can't update or acces them, The only true thing to protect it is just protect it. WEP can hacked just as WPA and WPA2, but they are still good enough to stop most

reply to post by dzonatas

You have it backwards. When Google found the private data they began deleting it. Some governments want the data preserved so they stopped. Google is caught between a rock and a hard place with data they never wanted in the first place.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by dzonatas

 

You have it backwards.

How backwards can this get?

In the US, Google is facing a suit filed by two people in an Oregon court who accuse the company of breaking federal privacy laws.

The plaintiffs have asked for the suit to be given class-action status and have filed a restraining order to prevent Google from deleting any of the data.

If Google doesn't stop, then they could be accused of obstruction of justice.

Privacy International argued that privacy authorities were wrong to ask for the data to be destroyed as it might be needed as evidence for criminal investigations.

That is quite a blanket statement for "criminal investigations"... It doesn't say if they mean just in this Google case, or if they mean in anything they can dig up in the data to be used in other (non-Google) cases.

Despite the password debate, does this clarify my reaction in the OP?

[edit on 21-5-2010 by dzonatas]

reply to post by dzonatas

Yes you had it backwards. You said:

...google stops deleting it...

...and now the government wants it

In reality it was:
1) Google begins deleting data.
2) The governments don't want it deleted. (Nowhere does it say that any government wants the data).
3) Google stops deleting it.

Despite the password debate, does this clarify my reaction in the OP?

Not really. Which part of your OP?
This part?

Don't you want your personal data available on the Internet?

Where is there anything said about the data being available on the internet?

Or this part?

Instead of Google Street View, they should call it Google Voyeur. You can scan inside windows and maybe even catch a look at your favorite girl next door.

We covered how much sense that statement makes.

[edit on 5/21/2010 by Phage]

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by dzonatas

 

Yes you had it backwards. You said:

This article starts with a title: "Google stops deleting..." so your complaint really is that I should not have posted the action stated by the title before the stated reason of why they stopped.

Whatever reason why the government wants to hold onto the data is a matter of opinion. Pretty much like, how you made an accusation of "stealing" is a matter of opinion.

Where is there anything said about the data being available on the internet?

They got it from the data networks, which is the Internet.

We covered how much sense that statement makes.

You mistook the security concern being presented: privacy... not encryption.

Originally posted by Phage
(Nowhere does it say that any government wants the data).

German data protection officials on Monday set a May 26 deadline for Google to hand over a hard drive from one of the roving vehicles it used to compile its 360-degree Street View photo mapping archive.

Source

That's what Germany wants, but F.T.C. has looked into it:

Mr. Barton and Mr. Markey asked the F.T.C. how the data had been collected and stored, and who had access to it. They also asked if the data collection had violated a reasonable expectation of privacy and if the practice had been deceptive or illegal.

As already shown in this thread, a WEP password is not an end-all means to how someone views a "reasonable expectation of privacy." Looks like Google wants to further protect the privacy on the data already gathered, as they refuse to hand over the hard drive to the government.

I'm sure a government of one country would be worried if personal data from their government fell into the hands of another government.

[edit on 22-5-2010 by dzonatas]

More about the data being collected:

Google was collecting the Wi-Fi data -- SSID (Service Set Identifier) information and MAC (Media Access Control) addresses -- in order to get better location information for its Google Maps service.

But after being asked to audit the information by a data protection authority in Hamburg, Germany, Google discovered that it was actually collecting "payload data" -- the content of IP packets -- as well. A Google engineer had added the capability to an experimental version of the project four years ago and it was never removed, Google said.

Source

Originally posted by dzonatas
This goes beyond than just google voyeur:

Google photographs homes from public streets, using a fleet of company cars.

To better pinpoint addresses for people using Google’s location services, the cars also harvest data from wireless networks in the homes, provided they had not been secured by passwords.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by dzonatas]

If they did that in New York, No Big Deal :-)

New York Law says you Can access any network as if it were a Public access point hot spot as long as the network does not have an encrypted password set.

From Wikipedia article on piggybacking:
en.wikipedia.org...

" New York law is the most permissive.[1] The statute against unauthorized access only applies when the network "is equipped or programmed with any device or coding system, a function of which is to prevent the unauthorized use of said computer or computer system".[35][36][37][38] In other words, the use of a network would only be considered unauthorized and illegal if the network owner had enabled encryption or password protection and the user bypassed this protection, or when the owner has explicitly given notice that use of the network is prohibited, either orally or in writing.[1][39][40] Westchester County passed a law, taking effect in October 2006, that prohibits commercial networks from being operated without a firewall, SSID broadcasting disabled, and a non-default SSID, in an effort to fight identity theft. Businesses that do not secure their networks in this way face a $500 fine. The law has been criticized as being ineffectual against actual identity thieves and punishing businesses like coffee houses for normal business practices. "

Darn. I wish I lived in New York.. I could use the free access for my laptop, :-)

In a reversal of course, Google now says that it will give European regulators data it secretly collected from open wireless networks over the past three years.

A Google spokesman said Thursday that the data should be handed over within a matter of days. Last week, the company found itself in conflict with a privacy regulator at the German city of Hamburg, who wanted access to the data. Google said that it wasn't sure that handing over the data would be legal.

Source

I wonder how much of the U.S. data is mixed into that hard drive that now is in the hands of German authorities. Lot of assumptions could be made on how and where these hard drives are and how the data finally gets stored. They never seemed to explain that if a probe in the U.S. and a probe in Europe eventually had its data collected onto a single hard drive, or if that was just used as an easy way to explain the situation.

The severity of the data and the means of extraction revealed:

The statement from the Hamburg Information Commissioner's office indicated that it had performed tests on a Google Street View car, in a controlled environment, with simulated wireless networks.

"For the wi-fi coverage in the Street View cars, both the free software Kismet, and a Google-specific program were used.

"The Google-specific program components are available only in machine-readable binary code, which makes it impossible to analyse the internal processing," it said.

Kismet's website says it is a "wireless network detector, sniffer, and intrusion detection system".

An article on Wi-Fi Planet about Kismet said that the software is capable of even detecting wireless networks where the so-called SSID wi-fi network identifier was hidden.

Dr Caspar said: "Because of the importance of the matter, we think a full investigation is essential.

Source

Impracticable here does not mean impossible to piece the data back together. It is, however, confirmed that even secured data is vulnerable and only data that has been rigorously encrypted is considered the safest from this exploited event.

[edit on 4-6-2010 by dzonatas]

That's interesting because they did so illegally

This is kind of a twist on the whole story. Google filed a related patent is now is accused of it as the reason for the data capture.

Google today denied that there was any link between a 2008 patent application and the current privacy debacle over its Street View vehicles snatching information from unsecured wireless networks.

Instead, the company's CEO has blamed a single Google engineer for the mess.

"That patent application is entirely unrelated to the software code used to collect Wi-Fi information with Street View cars," said a Google spokesman in an e-mail.

Her response was a reaction to questions about a lawsuit filed in an Oregon federal court that cited a November 2008 patent application for technology to gather, analyze and use data sent by users over their wireless networks.

Source

Does this mean that Google now owns the right for the authorities to investigate the data?

[edit on 5-6-2010 by dzonatas]