

Google Admits Streetview Cars Collected "Entire Emails, URLs and Passwords"   - privacyguru
http://www.securityweek.com/google-admits-streetview-cars-collecting-entire-emails-urls-and-passwords

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cryptoz
FTA:

> their investigations revealed that some incredibly private information was
> harvested in some cases.

Well now, slow down. If someone transmits information into the public airspace
in a public street, that data can no longer be referred to as _private_.

If Google had been breaking WEP while they drove along they would be violating
people's "reasonable expectations" of their privacy. But there's no reasonable
expectation of privacy if you're broadcasting radio signals that contain your
passwords. That's just dumb.

~~~
misterm
Why were they collecting this information in the first place? I don't
understand how they could just accidentally grab passwords.

~~~
timcederman
It's because they reused some code to grab the MAC addresses, which was also
grabbing packets (which it shouldn't have).

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eli
It's a pity that _this_ is the digital privacy case that the media and
politicians decided to run with.

There are legitimate unanswered questions about what privacy means in an
increasingly networked world... but what to do with personal information
broadcasted in the clear and recorded _by accident_ is not one of them.

------
Construct
This quote is taken out of context. Google was not specifically collecting
emails, URLs, and passwords. They were collecting packets. Collect enough
packets, and you will wind up with emails, URLs, and passwords in the data.

From the article, from Alan Eustace's (Senior VP Research & Engineering)
quote:

>It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary,
in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords.

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code_duck
So, these people should be using secure wireless. If I have a loudspeaker
playing my phone call into the air, I wouldn't complain that someone else
heard it. If I taped a giant banner with my email into the side of my house,
someone might take a photo.

If Google cracked my WEP key or something, that would be notable.

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scrrr
This makes Google a white-hat hacker that shows a security problem. I've just
been to Spain and was able to connect to unencrypted wifi spots on almost
every street-corner with my phone.

