Posted on 10/24/2010 6:52:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In an astonishing invasion of privacy, it admitted entire emails, web pages and even passwords were 'mistakenly collected' by antennae on its high-tech Street View cars...
The Information Commissioner's Office said it would launch a new investigation. Scotland Yard is already considering whether the company has broken the law.
Google executive Alan Eustace issued a grovelling apology and said the company was 'mortified', adding: 'We're acutely aware that we failed badly.'
...Google sent a fleet of specially equipped cars around Britain in 2008, armed with 360-degree cameras to gather photographs for its Street View project...
Privacy fears followed when it emerged that individuals could be seen, including a man emerging from a sex shop in London's Soho, three police officers arresting a man in Camden, North London, and children throwing stones at a house in Musselburgh, Scotland.
Earlier this year the California-based firm admitted that the cars' antennae had also scanned for wireless networks, including home wi-fi, which connect millions of personal computers to the internet.
Google registered the location, name and identification code of millions of networks and entered them into a database to help it sell adverts...
Google played down the significance of the wi-fi mapping and insisted it had not collected or stored data from personal computers.
It then backtracked and said its software had 'inadvertently' collected fragments of data which were being transmitted as the cars criss-crossed Britain.
The cars' antennae skipped networks five times a second, it said, meaning each network was only accessed for one-fifth of a second.
But it has now emerged that entire emails, web pages and passwords were copied and stored during that split-second.
The information was only gathered from wireless networks which were not password-protected.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I wonder if they happened to drive by the University of East Anglia?
Ironically, I found this using a Google search (while looking for something entirely else).
Google. Isn’t that owned by two socialists in San Jose? Nah. No need for concern.
Large corporations should not be allowed to spy or collect data on private citizens. Only Governments have that right./s
“Our motto, ‘Don’t be evil.’ is only a prohibition from using those passwords illegitimately, there is no injunction to ‘do good’ and tell these people that their networks were insecure. “
Do no evil my butt.
I say do no Google.
Ah, but when are ‘law enforcement’ going to force the government to behave in a legal manner?
Google HAS given...
google is evil. They favor high taxes except themselves and their spy on ppl
Looks like big business is gonna beat big brother to the punch.
Google needs to be dismantled and its constituent parts sent through saddam’s plastic shredders.
I quit Google. Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile and others are out there FREE.
As soon as you and me and a hundred million others git together and put the screws to the screws..
Well, if it’s in public, it’s not a crime to photograph, and if your wireless network is unsecured, it’s pretty much an invitation for someone to connect to it. They’re lucky it was Google data mining and not a hacker looking to steal their financial and personal data for more nefarious purposes.
Google should have been smarter than to do that, but I’m more comfortable with a corporation doing it than with a government doing it.
Well, if it’s in public, it’s not a crime to photograph, and if your wireless network is unsecured, it’s pretty much an invitation for someone to connect to it. They’re lucky it was Google data mining and not a hacker looking to steal their financial and personal data for more nefarious purposes.
Google should have been smarter than to do that, but I’m more comfortable with a corporation doing it than with a government doing it.
sounds like citizens need to apprehend these “street view” vehicles and make citizens’ arrests. This is a blatent invasion of the 4th amendment.
*nod* — You get it then.
The militia, according to the Constitution, may be “called forth” to “execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Couple that with most States defining their state militia as something similar to “every able-bodied male between eighteen and forty-five” and you could say that the “we the people” are the strongest “law enforcement agency in the country.”
Take 'em both down.
Dogpile = Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask.
I used to use Dogpile as my default, back when it included Alta Vista, Webcrawler, Bigfoot, and a few others that are now either kaput or unrecognizable, but now that its primary resource is Google I don't bother with it much.
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