June 22, 2010 at 17:21Did Google Street View cars spy all over the world?
The story of an illegal WiFi sniffer installed in a Google Street View car in Germany continues to spin up and takes on an alarming scale.
Connecticut state governor announced yesterday that authorities have launched an official investigation into the illegal collection of WiFi data by Street View vehicles. Moreover, according to the governor, similar investigations began in more than 30 (!) States of America. Earlier, a number of European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, announced the beginning of the investigation in the same cases.
May 15, Google officially recognized the fact of traffic collectionin Germany and apologized for this programming error dated 2006. Due to a technical glitch, cars recorded not only the MAC addresses and SSIDs of networks, but also accidentally recorded private traffic that passed through open WiFi networks. Eric Schmidt said that one programmer was to blame.
Now representatives of the company continue to apologize and add that they are cooperating with law enforcement agencies and "hope that they have not violated any American laws."
Judging by the latest quote, WiFi sniffers were installed not only in Germany, but also in other countries. Perhaps this was the standard equipment for all Google Street View cars in all countries of the world where these cars carried out the shooting of the terrain. Since 2007, they have traveled to almost all US cities.
Most likely, lawsuits from all states will be combined into a class action lawsuit in the near future , and the court hearings will be transferred to the California federal court, where Google’s headquarters are located. Google itself is asking for the merger of claims, which does not have the resources to simultaneously conduct proceedings in dozens of courts.
Connecticut state governor announced yesterday that authorities have launched an official investigation into the illegal collection of WiFi data by Street View vehicles. Moreover, according to the governor, similar investigations began in more than 30 (!) States of America. Earlier, a number of European countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, announced the beginning of the investigation in the same cases.
May 15, Google officially recognized the fact of traffic collectionin Germany and apologized for this programming error dated 2006. Due to a technical glitch, cars recorded not only the MAC addresses and SSIDs of networks, but also accidentally recorded private traffic that passed through open WiFi networks. Eric Schmidt said that one programmer was to blame.
Now representatives of the company continue to apologize and add that they are cooperating with law enforcement agencies and "hope that they have not violated any American laws."
Judging by the latest quote, WiFi sniffers were installed not only in Germany, but also in other countries. Perhaps this was the standard equipment for all Google Street View cars in all countries of the world where these cars carried out the shooting of the terrain. Since 2007, they have traveled to almost all US cities.
Most likely, lawsuits from all states will be combined into a class action lawsuit in the near future , and the court hearings will be transferred to the California federal court, where Google’s headquarters are located. Google itself is asking for the merger of claims, which does not have the resources to simultaneously conduct proceedings in dozens of courts.