This is the story that won’t die and perhaps that is a good thing. Some background: Google hires drivers to carry their photographic and wifi listening equipment on almost all of the streets of the world. Starting in 2006 Google’s listening system began storing ‘snippets’ of email, text, photographs and websites from wireless access points all over the world. Google wasn’t trying to listen for those snippets – just the existence of the wireless access points. Turns out you can map those access points so that a wireless phone user can determine his location without GPS – he just listens for mapped wireless access points. Neat idea.
Consumer Watchdog figured out that Google accidentally ‘sniffed’ the networks of various high profile politicians like Congresswoman Jane Harman who heads the sub committee for Homeland Security. They point out that Jane has an open wifi network at her home and could have leaked out vital information. Turns out most Congress people have open wifi networks at their homes – even internet savvy legislators like Henry Waxman.
The real issue here is not Google. They have fixed their system and that should be that. The real issue is that Google collected the data by accident. What if they had been trying to collect the data? I suspect they wouldn’t have issued a press release letting us know they were snooping on us. I bet they wouldn’t have switched channels so quickly, instead I suspect they would listen on all channels continuously.
The Russians and Chinese are actively engaged in espionage to uncover our public and private secrets. How hard would it be to hire an army of drivers to collect data from unsecured networks? Turns out not hard at all – and not that expensive either. The first step is for EVERYONE to take security more seriously. Congress should pass rules for members – we might want to have the Congressional IT staff lock down the home networks of each member. Hardware manufacturers should turn on tight security by default. America is wide open – we have a lot to lose. I think Google deserves our thanks, not our scorn for helping to uncover this glaring hole…
