
Google accused of criminal intent over StreetView data - draegtun
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10278068.stm
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coderdude
I wonder if we'll always have to deal with a world of nubs, or if some day
everyone will just "get it." It just blows my mind how little these people
seem to grasp about tech-related issues. Especially when privacy is concerned.

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melvin
That's what I've been wondering for a while. I've cringed my whole life when
people say "I'm not good with computers..." or display fundamental
misunderstandings. However, that made more sense when the average person
didn't use a computer as part of daily life. Now that they do, I thought this
would subside... instead, it's gotten worse, and we have legislators who are
barely at the "You've Got Mail" stage making critically important decisions
about the internet, software patents, and so on. Every day I deal with people
who have businesses based on the internet, but don't understand what an IP
address, a pixel, or a server is.

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pixelcort
> "The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn't add up. This is
> complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. <snip>"
> said Mr Davies.

Careful. If the code you write is complex, make sure it is also written by
more than just a lone you, that is has a budget and is overseen by someone.

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tptacek
What a load of crap.

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logic
You summed up in five words, what I was planning on writing quite a few more
on. Well done. :)

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orangecat
This seems like a clear-cut instance of Hanlon's Razor
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor>).

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coderdude
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor>

It's weird but HN removes the apostrophe from the URL unless you encode it.

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tvon
Simpler would be: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_Razor>

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coderdude
If you happen to know which pages redirect to the page you want?

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gojomo
Privacy International sound like obtuse blowhards in this piece.

Once you're promiscuously logging unencrypted wifi traffic, it's harder to
throw away the possibly-sensitive parts of 'payload data' than to just store
it all for later. Storing indiscriminately may be careless, but it _is_ easier
to code. Also, store-it-all and analyze/carve/blind-it-later is far more in
keeping with MapReduce/BigTable/etc data-mining ethos of a place like Google.
So Google's explanation is more credible than Privacy International's
speculation.

This doesn't absolve Google -- and the engineer(s) who wrote and deployed the
code in question -- from all responsibility. An alarm should have gone off in
someone's head -- "collecting this data is problematic!" But it's plausible
one person wrote the best scanner they could, and then later another wrote the
most comprehensive storage layer they could, and either no one understood the
combined impact, or the only person(s) who did were especially obtuse/cavalier
about privacy issues. (Lots of niches in the new economy reward, rather than
punish, a blaise attitude about privacy details -- at least until it reaches
the level of public scandal.)

