skip to main |
skip to sidebar
google this: the price of violating privacy 
from national post:
Google Inc. violated Canadian privacy law by collecting personal information from unsecured wireless networks across the country for its Street View service, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner said Tuesday.
“Our investigation shows that Google did capture personal information - and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete emails,” said Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in a statement. “This incident was a serious violation of Canadians’ privacy rights,” she said.
Noting that thousands of Canadians were likely affected, Ms. Stoddart said personal information collected by Google’s iconic Street View cars included complete emails, email addresses, user names and passwords, names and residential telephone numbers and addresses. Some particularly sensitive information was also inadvertently captured, such as a list of people suffering from certain medical conditions complete with their full names and contact information...
Ms. Stoddart has given the world’s largest search engine a deadline of Feb. 1 to delete all offending Canadian data. She said her office will allow Google to keep any data relevant to ongoing legal proceedings as long as the data are secured and access is restricted. The company, which has already secured and restricted access to the Canadian payload data, is currently facing a number of lawsuits in the United States related to its Street View data-collection methods.judge clears captcha-breaking case for criminal trial eu may propose criminal sanctions, fines for data privacy casesfrom bloomberg:
European Union regulators may propose expanded criminal penalties to enforce data protection rules that limit what companies and governments can do with personal information. People should also have the right to have their details deleted and to remove lists of friends, photos or medical records, according to a European Commission document obtained by Bloomberg. The proposals may also make it easier for data protection authorities and consumer groups to file lawsuits over privacy breaches.
Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are among several Internet companies that have come under European scrutiny for possible privacy breaches. Data-protection officials have criticized Facebook, the largest social-networking site, for putting users’ personal information and privacy at risk with recent policy changes. It’s “essential to have effective provisions on remedies and sanctions” including “criminal sanctions in case of serious data protection violations,” the paper from the EU’s executive agency says.
Privacy violations can be punished with jail time in Italy, where a court in February sentenced three Google officials to six-month terms, which were suspended. They were held responsible after a group of Turin school students filmed themselves bullying an autistic classmate and uploaded a clip to Google Video in 2006.military asks media to omit leaked documents - as pentagon braces for release of 400,000 iraq files on wikileaks
from ars technica:
Whether Google is liable for damages for secretly intercepting data on open WiFi routers across the United States is to be aired out in a Silicon Valley federal court. Eight proposed class-actions from across the country that seek unspecified monetary damages from Google were consolidated this week and transferred to US District Judge James Ware in San Jose, California. Another five cases are likely to join. The lawsuits allege Google violated federal and state privacy laws in collecting fragments of data from unencrypted wireless networks as its fleet of camera-equipped cars moseyed through neighborhoods snapping pictures for its Street View program... The deep-pocketed Google maintains that it did nothing wrong, and is likely to put up a fierce and costly defense. Google, in response to government inquiries and lawsuits, claims it is lawful to use packet-sniffing tools readily available on the internet to spy on and download payload data from others using the same open WiFi access point.
from v3.co.uk:
Google has admitted that it has been recording data transmissions on Wi-Fi networks using its Street View cars.
Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research at Google, explained in a blog post that, while Google routinely collects wireless information such as network names, it has also been collecting payload data from open Wi-Fi points for the past four years.
"So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental Wi-Fi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast Wi-Fi data," he said. "A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic Wi-Fi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Street View cars, they included that code in their software, although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data."
Eustace said that Google has shut down the Street View fleet until the company is sure that the software has been removed, and will bring in an independent third party to verify that the code has been expunged and fully deleted.
However, privacy watchdogs and consumer groups have pounced on the news as yet another example of Google's demonstrating a lack of concern for privacy.
"Google's computer engineers run amok, push the envelope and gather whatever data they can until their fingers are caught in the cookie jar," said John Simpson, consumer advocate with the Consumer Watchdog group. "Then a Google executive apologises, mouthing bafflegab about how privacy matters to the company."
Simpson added that Google's plan to have an unnamed third party study what went wrong, and to check that the improperly gathered private data has been eliminated, is inadequate. "That's like getting to pick the referees in a championship football game," he said.related/updates:
google data collection eyed by congress, class action lawsuit* google to offer encrypted search next week*
