Google have caused quite a FUSS after their accidental collection of unencrypted WiFi data.
“Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has lashed out at Google, accusing the internet giant of the single biggest breach of privacy in history.”
Here’s the official Google response.
I posted an article in February last year on how/why the street view cars collect WiFi data and I think it’s quite a clever idea. Basically, Google holds a database of WiFi MAC addresses collected by the street view car and users of their Latitude application. This database is then used to provide location information to users without a GPS device (i.e. on your laptop).
Google aren’t denying they collect WiFi access point information. Their mistake was storing un-encrypted WiFi data. Every WiFi access point broadcasts information about itself including a unique identifier (the MAC address) which is what google want. WiFi also broadcasts all data which is transferred – such as internet banking passwords and emails – meaning anyone within a reasonable distance can collect this private information. To prevent this most WiFi links use encryption to scramble the data making it unintelligible to anyone who doesn’t know a secret password. It wouldn’t matter if Google collected encrypted WiFi data because they can’t decrypt it.
So really, if you use an unencrypted WiFi link you really only have yourself to blame. An analogy of unencrypted WiFi communications would be sitting in your house with the windows open yelling your internet banking details over a megaphone for all your neighbors to hear. An encrypted WiFi link is slightly better because you’d be yelling the details in your own made-up language. I think Google are the least of your concerns.
It will be interesting to see what comes of the various government investigations into Google’s privacy breech. Maybe here in Australia Steven Conroy could add google.com to the proposed internet filter.
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