[governance] Google Wi-Fi gaffe breached Privacy Act

[Chaitanya Dhareshwar]

Never mind how it was illegal - basically that would basically tell them:

1. Network existance, security level, possibly the encryption type used,
frequency used and SSID
2. If unencrypted, the IP range in use, possibly the gateway IP (via a 3-4
point tracert)
3. Also perhaps if they were sniffing maybe a bit of info about who's using
it (unlikely given the way wifi works)

Which gives us.... what?

-C

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 10:01 PM, Roland Perry <
roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:

> In message <1345283393.42074.**YahooMailNeo at web125102.mail.**ne1.yahoo.com<1345283393.42074.YahooMailNeo at web125102.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>>,
> at 02:49:53 on Sat, 18 Aug 2012, Imran Ahmed Shah <ias_pk at yahoo.com>
> writes
>
>> Does this action of "Information Collection" by Google really breach the
>> Privacy Act, PIPA
>>
>
> What Google did was to wiretap (and keep) small fragments of the traffic
> on wifi hotpots as they drove past.
>
> That's probably an offence under long standing law in most countries (I
> wouldn't want to start making a list of them off the cuff).
>
> For it to have been a real threat to the persons in question, they would
> have had to refrain from switching on encryption[1] and to have been
> sending/receiving some emails (or whatever) in exactly the few seconds the
> Google Streetcar was listening to that particular hotspot.
>
> [1] Even the simplest type would have been sufficient, the fragments
> captured are not enough to start any useful "cracking".
> --
> Roland Perry
>
>
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