CONROY SLAMS 'CREEPY' GOOGLE

By Timothy McDonald and staff
Updated Tue May 25, 2010 9:42am AEST

Caught out: a Google Street View camera takes photos of buildings in Amsterdam (AFP: Toussaint Kluiters)
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has lashed out at Google, accusing the internet giant of the single biggest breach of privacy in history.

In recent weeks Google has been criticised after revelations that its Street View photo cars were also collecting information about people's wireless internet connections.

Google has also been a critic of the Government's proposed internet filtering plan, but Senator Conroy insists his comments are not payback.

He says Google considers itself accountable to no-one and he has singled out the internet giant's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, for special criticism.

"I think that the approach taken by Mr Schmidt is a bit creepy, frankly," Senator Conroy said.

"When it comes to their attitude to their own censorship, their response is simply, 'trust us'. That is what they actually state on their website: 'Trust us'."

Several national privacy commissioners have raised concerns over Google's collection of wi-fi data, a practice which has ceased since it was made public.

Senator Conroy says Google considers itself to be above government.

"They consider that they are the appropriate people to make the decisions about people's privacy data and that they are perfectly entitled to drive the streets and collect as much private information by photographing over fences and collecting data information," he said.

"This is probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy."

'Deliberate' breach

In a post on Google's official blog, Alan Eustace, a senior vice-president at the company, said the information on wi-fi connections was collected by mistake.

"In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental wi-fi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast wi-fi data," the blog reads.

"A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic wi-fi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google's Street View cars, they included that code in their software - although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.

"As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible."

Following questions from Liberal Senator Mary Jo Fisher at a budget estimates hearing yesterday, Senator Conroy disputed Google's claim that the privacy breach was inadvertent.

"Google have admitted to doing this and claim it was a mistake in the software code," he said.

"It was actually quite deliberate ... the code that the computer program uses was designed to collect this information ... they wrote a piece of code designed to do it."

Google has been a critic of the minister's proposed internet filtering plan, saying it could affect user speeds and accidentally filter legitimate material.

The company also says it would give parents a false sense of security, because it would be quite easy to circumvent.

The internet censorship debate has been a heated one, and others in the estimates hearing suggested that there might be some personal motivation in the minister's comments.

The attack did not go unnoticed by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.

"Minister, you just went on a 10-minute tirade of corporate character assassination," Senator Ludlam said.

Google was yet to return calls from AM for a response.

AUSTRALIAN POLICE TO PROBE GOOGLE OVER PRIVACY

Australian police to probe Google over privacy
AFP June 7, 2010, 12:43 am
The Australian government has ordered a police investigation into Internet giant Google over alleged privacy breaches, Attorney General Robert McClelland said Sunday.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last month accused the company of committing the "single greatest breach in the history of privacy" by collecting private wireless data while taking pictures for its 'Street View' mapping service.

McClelland said the government had asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate after receiving numerous complaints.

"Obviously I won't pre-empt the outcome of that investigation but they relate in substantial part to possible breaches of the Telecommunications Interception Act, which prevents people accessing electronic information other than for authorised purposes," McClelland said.

Whether any charges are laid is up to the police, but the government felt "there were issues of substance that required police investigations", McClelland said.

Google said it collected the data in error.

"This was a mistake. We are talking to the appropriate authorities to answer any questions they have," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

The development comes after the Internet giant reportedly said its Street View cars taking photos in more than 30 countries had inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data sent over unsecured WiFi systems, and would hand information over to European data protection authorities.

Google has led criticism of Australia's planned Internet filter, warning it could damage the nation's reputation as a liberal democracy and set a dangerous global precedent.

GOOGLE ADMITS COLLECTING WI-FI DATA THROUGH STREET VIEW CARS

German request for data audit reveals the web giant 'accidentally' stored payload information from open networks

Jemima Kiss The Guardian, Saturday 15 May 2010

A Google mapping car in of Bedminster, UK

A Google mapping car with which the web giant admits accidentally collecting wifi data. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

Google has been accidentally gathering extracts of personal web activity from domestic wifi networks through the Street View cars it has used since 2007, it said last night.

It was discovered as a result of a data audit demanded by Germany's data protection authority, and is likely to inflame critics of Google concerned about the web giant's use of private data.

As well as systematically photographing streets and gathering 3D images of cities and towns around the world, Google's Street View cars are fitted with antennas that scan local wifi networks and use the data for its location services.

In a post on its European Public Policy blog on 27 April, Google stated that although it does gather wifi network names (SSIDs) and identifiers (Mac addresses) for devices like network routers, it does not gather "payload" data passed through those wifi networks.

But yesterday Google blogged that the audit had prompted it to "re-examine everything we have been collecting" and admitted its mistake.

"It is now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open wifi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products."

Google said it amounted to 600GB, equivalent to a consumer hard drive, but that this data consisted only of fragments of activity from open wifi networks. Password-protected web services, such as banking or secure HTTP addresses, would not have been included, and neither would data from password-protected wireless networks.

Google blamed the mistake on a piece of legacy code from an experimental project that had been re-used to programme equipment on the Street View cars, and said it will ask a third party to oversee deletion of the data and its procedures.

"As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and are currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries about how to quickly dispose of it."

Google said the discovery highlighted the vulnerability of data in open wifi networks. It has previously said other companies, including Skyhook and Microsoft, already scan wifi networks and gather information in this way.

The Google Street View feature in Google Maps, introduced in 2007, now displays street-level images from cities in nine countries, including 21 in the UK.

But it has faced regular concerns about privacy, which started in Britain on the day of the launch after users found images of a man throwing up in the street and another leaving a sex shop. In April last year, residents in Broughton barricaded roads to stop the Street View car entering the village, saying it would encourage crime and was an invasion of privacy.

Google is struggling with stricter privacy laws in Germany, where it has yet to launch the service, and Switzerland where it was introduced in August. Despite a flood of demands from the European Union, including wiping its Street View images after six months instead of 12, Google has said it remains committed to Street View in Europe. It said reports that it would stop mapping streets in any more EU countries are inaccurate.
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010