[LINK] google misdeeds and Australia's Privacy Commissioner

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:53:44AM +1000, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> "Australian banks use secure internet connections and my Office is not
> aware of any instances where banking information has been collected,"
> she said.
>
> [so what? What about other passwords to other services? Again, she is
> being very limited in her perspective. Is this ignorance or continued
> siding with corporations instead of the general public's interests?

or maybe she just takes her job seriously enough that she doesn't want
to get forced into a witch-hunt by hysterical and ignorant mobs.




BTW, for those who haven't seen it yet:

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/05/technical-details-of-street-view-wifi.html

    Wednesday, May 19, 2010

    Technical details of the Street View WiFi payload controversy
    Posted by Robert Graham at 12:38 PM

    The latest privacy controversy with Google is that while scanning
    for WiFi access-points in their Street View cars, they may have
    inadvertently captured data payloads containing private information
    (URLs, fragments of e-mails, and so on).

    Although some people are suspicious of their explanation, Google
    is almost certainly telling the truth when it claims it was an
    accident. The technology for WiFi scanning means it's easy to
    inadvertently capture too much information, and be unaware of it.

    This article discusses technically how such scanning works.  

    [...]

    Some people have accused Google of lying, and for having some
    nefarious purpose for gathering these packets. However, anybody who has
                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    experience in WiFi mapping would believe Google.
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


pretty much what i've been saying all along.  their explanation is credible.
you have to ignore how the technology actually works and indulge in some
conspiracy theory thinking (against the advice of occam's razor) to find
any reason to disbelieve them.


and read the rest of the article...it's well worth reading.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>