Topic: GOOGLE - on June 5, 2010 at 11:50:00 AM CEST
As Google Hands Over Collected WiFi Data In Germany, France And Spain, Ireland Tells Google To Destroy It
We recently covered how the data that Google collected via its Street View WiFi efforts was caught in this weird legal limbo, between privacy laws, data retention laws and rules about destroying evidence. However, it looks like that's getting settled...
techdirt.com
Germany Finds Kismet, Custom Code In Google Car
While waiting for a hard disk of Wi-Fi data that Google says its Street View cars gathered by mistake, the Hamburg Information Commissioner's office performed tests on a Google Street View car in a controlled environment with simulated wireless networks and issued the following statement: 'For the Wi-Fi coverage in the Street View cars, both the free software Kismet, and a Google-specific program were used. The Google-specific program components are available only in machine-readable binary code, which makes it impossible to analyze the internal processing.' Interestingly, a 2008 academic paper — Drive-by Localization of Roadside WiFi Networks (PDF) — describes a similar setup, and its authors discuss how they 'modified Kismet, a popular wireless packet sniffer, to optionally capture all packets received on the raw virtual interface.' Computerworld reports that lawyers in a class-action suit have amended their complaint to link a Google patent app to Street View data sniffing.
slashdot.org
... Comment
