[LINK] google misdeeds and Australia's Privacy Commissioner

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 09:47:40AM +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-06-23 at 09:09 +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > > and they didn't give consent for Google to collect their network
> > > transmissions.
> >
> > they didn't need to. they broadcast it publicly for anyone to
> > overhear, whether they knew that was what they were doing or not.
>
> The key point you seem to be missing, and that Richard and others
> are trying patiently to make clear, is that it is the *collection*
> aspect that makes something a privacy issue. That is, there is a
> difference between overhearing something and eavesdropping, and a
> difference between picking up this or that and deliberately building a
> collection.

i'm not missing that at all.

the Privacy Act only covers personally identifying information ("PII").
it does not cover other information. overhearing something - or even
deliberately eavesdropping in public - is NOT illegal. not under the
privacy act, and not under any other laws.

and, as i keep saying:

1. merely asserting that the payload data contains PII is not enough.
you need to prove it.

2. merely claiming that google were "deliberately building a collection"
is not enough. you need to prove it.

Richard and others are not "trying patiently to make clear". they are
repeatedly making unfounded claims without providing any evidence (and
even refusing to acknowledge that the onus is on them to prove their
claims).


there's also point 3, which is that for wifi networks, "overhearing" and
"collecting" and "storing" are synonymous but that's delving back into
technology.


> I don't know if RC et al understand the tech, but in this case it really
> isn't very relevant.

there are (at least) two arguments going on here.

the first is about technology.  Richard and others clearly do not
understand how wifi or network sniffing works and do not seem to want to
understand how they work.

the second is about natural justice and rules of evidence.  when someone
makes a claim, or an accusation, the onus is on them to prove it.

craig

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