[LINK] google misdeeds and Australia's Privacy Commissioner

[Kim Holburn]

On 2010/Jun/22, at 4:29 PM, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> At the physical layer, you're absolutely right. But a WiFi network is
> not only Layer One - it's also the MAC layer, Layer Two.

Bzzzzzzt.  Wrong.  It is the link layer or layer 1.  MAC (Media Access  
Control) address, "ethernet" layer.  Layer 2 is the IP layer.

> At the MAC
> layer, the "network" is created by devices obeying the addressing  
> rules
> (among other things). To eavesdrop, you don't just open a radio  
> channel

Actually, you don't open anything, you can just listen.

> - you also choose to implement a specific addressing behaviour ("turn
> off the MAC address check", as Errata puts it).

You may not necessarily use the driver installed by the department  
store but then you aren't using equipment you bought from a department  
store.

I don't really want to revisit the discussion about whether google did  
right or wrong.  It's pretty clear what it did wrong was not so much  
to receive packets but to store packets probably along with location  
data.  Given the speed of the google cars I can't imagine there is  
that much data from any one site.  At those sort of speeds there is no  
chance of connecting to any networks, just receiving a couple of wifi  
packets at the most from any AP.  It is probable that any normal  
consumer wifi receiver probably wouldn't work under those conditions.   
Sorting out payload from broadcast is probably too time-consuming to  
be done in realtime which maybe why they stored it.

Oh and a wifi packet is just as likely to contain only a fragment of  
an IP packet which is what Curtis was talking about.

I don't think getting in high dudgeon over this is all that helpful.   
Clearly the Privacy commissioner isn't too fussed either.

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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