
Google offices raided by Korean police - fiaz
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10924682
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moxiemk1
It still puzzles me that people feel like their _legal_ privacy was violated
by the info gathering. The wifi was broadcasting, they were in public, they
recorded some data. If this is illegal, I don't think it should be. Its
analagous to taking pictures of people in public. Its in public. They're just
standing there with an antenna.

Granted, it seems a bit creepy, and I don't fault people for feeling violated.
But legal action seems silly. (I know that laws may be different in these
various countries - I'm saying that this _shouldn't_ be illegal if it is)

~~~
ewams
I don't understand why I was arrested for driving off with a new BMW that was
parked in the street. It even came with a baby in the back! Lucky for me the
keys were in the ignition and the door was open.

~~~
moxiemk1
Passively standing in the vicinity of a BMW doesn't let you drive it.
Passively standing in a Wifi network space lets you transcribe the traffic.
You don't change the system (in a loose sense) by recording the signals or
not, while stealing the BMW, you do.

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po
So I imagine a bunch of police rush into a google office… what exactly do they
do? Do they jump on someone's desktop and start searching for evidence? Do
they say "nobody touch nothin' ya hear?" and take over as sysadmin?

I mean they seized hard drives… Do they think that the data is on the hard
drives laying around in the office?

This never makes sense to me.

~~~
draebek
> Do they jump on someone's desktop and start searching for evidence? Do they
> say "nobody touch nothin' ya hear?" and take over as sysadmin?

Do they use Google Desktop search or the local office's Google search
appliance to search for the incriminating evidence?

~~~
po
If you've ever used Google's search appliance, you already know that wouldn't
work.

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quant18
Hilarious timing by Yonhap (S. Korea's public news agency) --- they reported
this morning, just as the raid was about to begin: "Google ranked #1 as
foreign company people want to work for" (in Korean):
[http://www.yonhapnews.co.kr/economy/2010/08/10/0302000000AKR...](http://www.yonhapnews.co.kr/economy/2010/08/10/0302000000AKR20100810050700003.HTML)

"According to the results of job portal JobsKorea's research on 814 university
students on August 10, the foreign-invested company most desired to work for
was Google, in first place with 23.1% of respondents. Afterwards were 9.0% for
Yuhan Kimberly (a Kimberly-Clark JV), 5.3% for Citibank, 4.8% for IBM, and
3.2% for Sony."

As for this incident ... well, Internet privacy in Korea was always a
crapshoot anyway, seeing as you have to send your citizen's id and real name
to sign up for social networking sites, random forums, online shopping and
games, or to verify your age so you can search for "breast cancer" or "genital
warts" on Naver.

Not to minimise the very real concerns over what the hell Google is doing, but
this raid smells of some ambitious young public prosecutors who want to make a
name for themselves by taking on a big foreign company (and ignoring all the
domestic companies whom I highly doubt have been entirely on the up-and-up
about what they do with their 100% personally identifiable data about the
members of their own sites). Incidentally, remember that last year, Google
explicitly chose to disable Youtube comments and uploads from Korea rather
than comply with the real name registration requirements ...
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/162989/google_disables_upload...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/162989/google_disables_uploads_comments_on_youtube_korea.html)

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jacquesm
Google is facing the same accusations in Germany (they've been cleared in the
UK) and in other countries, I think the raid may have to do with them
stonewalling investigators like they did in Germany. After all, the Korean
police can read the news just fine and they must have tried to get a feeling
for how google would respond if they asked.

The not-so-smart element here is that I presume google learned a lot from
their previous encounters with the law in Italy, France, the UK and Germany
and would not have left any relevant data lying around their offices for
investigators to find.

What bothers me about googles' behaviour in all this is that they behave as
though they're above the law in terms of privacy and on top of that they had
no business collecting this information in the first place.

Saying you're going to photograph the streets but actually adding a wardriving
module to your data collection vehicles is not something that you can claim
you did 'accidentally'.

[http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0515/google-streetview-vans-
acci...](http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0515/google-streetview-vans-accidentally-
spied-private-wifi-data/)

I find that extremely hard to believe and I think google has some public
explaining to do about how such a thing could ever happen 'by accident'.

~~~
yellowbkpk
If I were spending millions of dollars sending cars + drivers out on every
street in the world I would want to collect as much data as possible. I
imagine they had cell radios, wifi radios, probably even FM and AM radios all
collecting data in conjunction with highly-accurate GPS readings.

If their software to collect WiFi signal strength was based on a packet
capture system (perhaps by interfacing with Wireshark or one of its
libraries), I could see how it might be a mistake to save this data while
attempting to collect other data.

However, I imagine that they simply wanted to collect as much data as
possible, including WiFi traffic (that should really be considered public,
anyway...).

~~~
weego
If I were going on holiday or on business to a city, it would be incredibly
useful if I could see a public/free wifi overlay (showing the radius of a
decent strength signal) on top of the city map. The only way to do that of
course would be to scan and record all available wifi networks at every step
and then group the signals based on the ssid. That will obviously hit all
networks, but if it cant access anything what is the problem?

If the ssid is visible and your network is available then everyone with a wifi
card is doing what Google did every time they turn their laptop or smartphone
on anyway.

~~~
jcl
It's one thing to record the signatures of open wireless networks in a given
location. But, from what I hear, Google was also recording the payloads of the
packets it intercepted. I can understand people being upset by this,
especially if carried out on a large scale.

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ck2
I think they just wanted to see in general what google is doing and this was
as good an excuse as any.

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nkassis
This sounds like a me too by the korean police. I mean, what's the point, most
of that data won't be held on korean servers, much less google's korean
office.

I'd like to know if google employees even use their desktop as thick or thin
clients.

~~~
Ardit20
Well its on BBC news. I am sure it adds pressure on Google and probably sends
them a clear signal.

~~~
jrockway
A clear signal to do what, be less transparent and pull their office out of
Korea?

(Remember, Korea has no great firewall. Google can profit from Korean users
without having an office there.)

~~~
Ardit20
To be more careful with privacy.

I am sure Google would not want to be prevented to provide a service -
personally I think a great service - of viewing the streets of Korea.

~~~
sorbus
No, the message they are sending is that, when you confess to a mistake and
say that you're going to fix it, everyone starts attacking you. Keep in mind
that Google announced that they made a mistake by storing packets from wifi
networks; it wasn't leaked by an employee who thought it was unethical.

