More Google Shenanigans with Your WiFi Data

Google: Caught sniffing out WiFi packets...

Our friends at Google, caught with their pants down in regard to capturing peoples private WiFi data from their Google Map vehicles, were handed a pretty brutal ruling the other day from the US government in their court battle over this.

Google, as you may know, sent out these vehicles with the express intention, according to this PDF brief, of capturing WiFi data in order along with the street images in order to update their street view product with precise wireless routing.  These "sniffers" captured MAC addresses (addresses of devices in your house such as your PC) along with whatever happened to be flying along through the air at the time.

German authorities first caught on to what Google was doing several years ago and this has all snowballed into a US Federal wiretapping lawsuit against Google.

The ruling I mention came after Google filed a motion to dismiss the case claiming that the WireTap Act 18 U.S.C. provides an exclusion for capturing radio transmission "readily accessible to the general public."  Google apparently thought this meant that it was okay to capture any radio signal you received "in the wild", i.e., anything your antenna picked up where ever you were.  At first blush it seems as if this is what it says but the Judge thinks otherwise.

At issue is the fact that the act was written prior to the prevalence we see today of WiFi and cellphones.  Google might be right if there were no prior court-based interpretations of the law:

If the act were antiquated in the sense that it was talking about, say, hard land lines like those hanging from telephone poles, instead of radio signals, Google might have a point and could claim their meaning of "readily accessible" was correct.

Secondly, if following an interpretation different than Google's (say that of the US government), led to some sort of ambiguity or logical nonsense, then they might also have a point.
But the law has been on the books long enough for there to exist prior precedents with respect to the court determining its meaning.

The wiretap law has already been applied to cell phone technology - cell phones produce signals which are "readily accessible" - but courts have determined that the intention of the act - to prevent ease droppers - applies even though the signals themselves are "readily accessible to the general public."

Or perhaps Google thought they were just like John and Alice Martin who tapped Newt Gingrich's cell phone calls in Florida in 1997 and were never prosecuted.


In any case Google now claims their actions were a "mistake" - as if that fixes anything or acts as any kind of excuse...


"Gosh, officer, I thought she was 18..."  "it was just a mistake..."


Right.


Personally I think anyone is a fool if they believe that their WiFi is secure if its not password protected.


And Google here proves the point very well.


I don't think that they will fare will in this over the long haul.  Their violations of the WireTap act were in every way egregious as far as the government is concerned because they violate the basic intent of the statute: tapping into others radio communications is a crime.


Had they just collected the names of wireless routers there wouldn't have been an issue.


But they deliberately chose to capture WiFi data and even tried to patent the process.


I think its an ironic twist of fate that the US Senate is currently after Eric Schmidt, previously Google's CEO, to testify on the basic "anti trust" elements of Google.  Until recently Schmidt 'declined' the Senate's invitation - but recently he relented (see this).


No doubt those pesky Senator's will bring up this matter with Schmidt along with "don't be evil" - the corporate policy...


Remember Google and Eric, just as the Spiderman comic says:


"With great power comes great responsibility."