[LINK] More to the world than physics [was: Google's WiFi bungle]

[Craig Sanders]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 09:46:49AM +1000, Stephen Wilson wrote:
> There's only two things to say here and then I'm done.  First, I often 
> enough prefaced my remarks with the stated assumption that Google have 
> the resources to render even basic wifi data as identifiable; on this, 
> Craig and I appear to be in agreement, for he said "admittedly, google 
> ARE experts at extracting signal from noise".  

no, we are not in agreement.  you're, once again, drawing false
conclusions from minimal data.

the most obvious thing i disagree with is your assumption that there IS
personally identifiable information in the data. regardless of google's
expertise, they're not miracle-workers. if the data isn't there, they
can't find it.


> Second, they admitted themselves that they collected much more than   
> basic wifi data, they apologised, and they undertook to destroy that  
> data, which rather confirms that what they collected was indeed       
> personal information.                                                 

no, it doesn't confirm that at all. 

it confirms that they collected much more than basic wifi data.

it says NOTHING about the nature of that data.

craig

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