say what you like
about the french
but atleast they stand up for themselves.
£100k is pocket change for google but atleast it's something more than "thankyou ever so much for promising not to break this law in future"
French privacy watchdogs have hit Google with its very first fine for allowing its Street View cars to snoop on citizens' Wi-Fi data. The search giant must pay a €100,000 (£87,114) fine for improperly gathering and storing data for its Street View application. The privacy regulator CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique …
UK - 'Well if you promise then things wil be ok wont they mr Googl 'e' woogalee'
Google-' Er, Yer, Sure Sir, We will do that for you.'
'Uk - 'Gooood, now, anyone want a cookie?'
Google - 'MEE and when i am finnish ma cookie i'm gunna play with your data until i am bord then i might bin it'.
Well done France, ServiceWith* is right, atleast there making a point.
France also accused Google of already using the data collected to improve its geo-location database and "acquire a dominant position in the field..."
Interesting because http://www.wigle.net (slide over to France) shows that the French citizens are quite busy generating their own Wi-Fi location maps... but it's probably just to help those poor EMI sensitive souls I guess.
Not to mention that all is needed for geo-location is the BSSID - which is broadcast by default (on most) routers - and the GPS co-ordinates.
Connecting to the network and sniffing packet data is not required therefore Google capturing that data didn't help them "acquire a dominant position in the field...". The vast amount of petrol they burned did.
(Not saying that the data capture is right - just that it's not associated with geo-location.)
Please tell me you aren't serious... It's a fine of roughly $US150 THOUSAND issued to a company with a market value of $185 BILLION and a profit last year of around $19 BILLION
Let's put it this way - It's like a person on a wage in the higher end of average being fined one whole dollar.
..... but most places in the world, an unsecured WiFi connection is considered to be a public access point and any data sent over it to be "in the public domain" (same as posting it to a Blog site for eg).
I haven't seen anything, anywhere saying that Google were brute forcing WiFi encryption keys in order to grab this data.
So, people kicking up a stink because they are too stupid, or are unwilling to use secured services like the encryption that ever WiFi router has built in, deserve no claim to privacy in my mind.
Sorry France - But I think you need to fix your laws on this one.
I disagree with ZigZag and Tim Bates comments above.
Its not the size of the fine, its the fact that Google have been proved wrong through a legal challenge and hence now know that they have broken the law. For Google this is the problem, and hence if they pay up than they admit they did break the law, so i suspect they will use the 2 week window to appeal this.
Its not the fact that the WiFi ws open, its the fact that Google simply collected all the information without prior concent. Just because a wifi signla is open does not permit you to legally attach to it and start taking data off it. Even if people were stupid, the European Data Protection Directive makes this clear, that you are not allowed to process data without a specific agreement.