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Privacy in the world of [Google Glass] and wearable computing . . . and wifi, apparently
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Really? Because I know in all the times I've had that scenario happen, I have never once thought "hey, free food". Instead, I've always thought "that is a function that I am not privy to."
If you think our society should be "permission granted except when explicitly denied", then let's have that discussion. But let's have that discussion openly, where everyone gets to join in.
You greatly overestimate the ability for the govt to run a public event efficiently. They have food at these events for specific particular people, and will just throw it all out on a table. Random people always show up and grab stuff from it and its just accepted. the only people accosted at these events are the homeless who sneak in trying to get some food.
edit: source is I've worked alot of these events for the city and more local affairs, and helped out at state run events for VA.
Weird feeling, ain't it?
Guess who set up the network? A reasoning, thinking individual. Therefore, I can assume that open = permission. Because he's a reasoning, thinking individual you see. And this goes directly back to "anyone with autoconnect on is a criminal" because that is what you're arguing - telling a computer to do it's own thing automatically is illegal if it touches a wifi network that some idiot didn't configure and assume it was private. And here is where I stop reading the thread
What you're talking about is ease of enforcement, not morality of transgression.
Yes, it is.
Again, capability does not mean permission. You are the person who is acting, it is incumbent on you to make sure that you have permission.
Edit: Again, this all comes down to your argument that you can assume that availability implies permission. Over and over, we have illustrated that this mode runs counter to how our society is set up, where the default assumption is that permission is denied. Furthermore, you have given no defense of your position beyond the weak argument of "how computers work". You want to defend that there should be an implicit case for permission, then make a case for it. Don't just try to shift blame onto the tools.
Having a public, open wifi is not like putting out a sign that says "Hamburgers." It is the default set up under many older routers. If someone takes the deliberate step of renaming their wifi "free public wifi" then I would agree with you that they have invited public use. But the default in our society is basically never that private property is made available for use by the public.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
There are people who can set up cheep logitech wireless routers, without any idea how to secure their network.
I do not believe a Net+ should be required inorder to expect privicy.
That's nice. It's also immaterial to people's objections to Glass somehow only just now exposing them to being recorded in public at a public event.
As far as I understand it, they were only capturing packets, not using the network to send data, or even connecting to the network. So ignoring the idea of being able to 'take' bandwidth. The correct analogy would be if he was flinging the burger patties out into the street, would it be acceptable to catch one?
If you are having an embarrassing shouting match from within your house, and the windows are open. Is someone who walks down the street spying on you?
Having the network broadcasting is you sending out the information. You can say you didn't intend for it to be looked at(and it wasn't), but you are still actively send the information out into public space.
If a band is giving a concert in a park, that I live next to. And in lieu of buying a ticket, I sit on my roof and watch the show, am I stealing?
I consider wardriving to be a rather gray activity.
I'd consider it very suspicious activity if they didn't erase it. Why the fuck would anybody want to record a random argument in someone's house? If its a serious matter where domestic abuse is occurring or a crime is being committed there's some leeway (but even then I don't know exactly what the law makes for that though recording someone without permission can be a crime) and call the police to handle the situation.
If that information is that valuable to you that you have to secretly take it without asking the person's permission, that's a very shady moral area to be in. You're taking private information IIRC, not a public broadcast from a commercial IP like tv show's are and entertainment corporations go batshit when they catch pirates. Tv shows are really under their control all we get is a signal sent to us that comes with restrictions (this varies, of course). Why do you need that information anyway?
You are stealing by not paying for concerts that require a ticket.
I'm not completely sure, but I'm pretty sure that if you were to broadcast a baseball game or concert you filmed - even if it was filmed from a public area (or your own property) - you could get a legitimate cease and desist, and forfeit any profits.
Now, the copyright laws (i think that's what it would fall under) are a whole issue...but I don't think you would automatically have the right to broadcast that. I'm SURE Google / YouTube would yank your home footage in a second, but that's probably more corporate policy than law.
EDIT - and even squatter's laws require it to be done OPENLY.
I was talking about a private party, but this is just an analogy, so let's not belabor the point.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
I have never gotten to say this unironically before, but check your privilege. Not everyone knows how to secure their network. Does that mean they aren't entitled to privacy or the exclusive use of their network, just because they made the blameworthy decision to be old and not understand technology?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
You're twisting reality a bit here to make a point that I just don't see. Not sure your technical expertise, but you just run a wireless card in promiscuous mode and capture packets. It's a fairly simple thing one might do for a number of reasons. Google was doing it to tie SSID broadcasts (inherently public in that they are broadcast into the airwaves) to long/lat. I don't get any sense that there's any personally-owned data anyone has a claim to there. There isn't anything Google should or needs to compensate anyone for.
However, in doing this, you end up capturing a lot of packets with who-knows-what in them. This is how wireless capture works by default.
You aren't actually logging onto the network or even connecting to it or requesting an IP address or anything. So your trespassing claim, as weak as it was to begin with, really has no place at all. It's only arguably trespassing under certain state laws if you're actually intentionally connecting to someone else's network. All Google was doing was just figuratively opening their ears to hear everything that is being said around you. In a public place, listening to broadcasts on the public airwaves.
Granted, some of that data was probably intended to be personal and private, not broadcast publicly. Hey, intent is important! Like, whether Google actually intended to steal private data. Considering they had a clear purpose that didn't involve stealing personal data, and never showed any signs of wanting or using the data for anything, and considering how easy it is to explain why they ended up with such data without intending to... your whole "this is a form of trespassing!! no one was compensated!!" stuff is pitiful to me.
It's like if I was driving around recording bird songs and inadvertently picked up part of an argument between two people in a house with their window open. Assuming I didn't stick around to record the argument, and I never tried to use it for anything, it's pretty safe to assume that my inadvertent capture of their conversation wasn't "trespassing," and I am not "victim-blaming" if I suggest that if they are concerned about it, perhaps they should probably shut their window and not yell so loud as to be heard from people passing on a nearby public road. And anyway, victim of what? Nothing was done to them. If I turned around and sold the recording of the conversation to someone, or used it against them somehow, well then at least we'd have a victim of something.
But whatever, Google paid the millions in ransom as well as beefing up their diligence on not inadvertently capturing data.
Happy to trample on people in pursuit of profit? Oh jesus. Americans buying pharmaceuticals from Canada has never been a one-sided issue. I find your position on it here distastefully disingenuous. Is that the best you've got? Sorry, I read a few articles on this pharm thing and I'm even more convinced that it is primarily a case of "Google made how much profit? We need to investigate them for something!!" They took from Google not only every dollar they ever made on those ads, but they also took from Google every dollar the pharmaceutical companies ever made selling drugs in the U.S. The latter is undoubtedly the much larger number. I'm pretty sure I could easily spin this as "Big Pharma gets ticked that Google helps people get cheaper drugs from Canada, calls in their politician buddies to fix them good and get that money back."
This thread has all been worth it.
1. Yes, I know how to wardrive. I've never had any desire to do so, but I know the basic mechanics.
2. As I stated several times, I consider wardriving to be a practice that is at best a medium shade of gray. There are legitimate purposes, but there are also a lot of illegitimate uses as well.
3. If what you are saying is true about Google only looking for open SSIDs, then why wardrive in the first place?
4. Again, why retain the packets?
I don't see a problem with demanding that corporations take a proactive approach to privacy, and consider that when they are planning to perform some activity.
I also don't see what is wrong with governments making sure the lesson sinks in with a fine. Fining a company is how you make them be more careful in the future.
Incompetence or malice, either way Google screwed the pooch and earned the dickslapping they got.
A home user BETTER KNOW how to disable SSID broadcast and encrypt traffic, but one of the most powerful tech firms on the planet? Not their fault when they fuck up.
It's cultural cognitive dissonance. The big buzzword at SXSW this year was "permissionless innovation".
This is actually a perfect example of what I feel people are missing with these analogies.
There is no social expectations of food in a public space being freely available.
However, there is such an expectation for free WiFi.
Even in my not-very connected world, stores, coffee shops, malls, The City, trains, buses offer free public WiFi.
Putting your WiFi network, amongst all of these, without differentiating it, is like having your BBQ in the middle of a Free Food giveaway event without indicating that you're not part of said event.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Ask someone who's talking about that.
Everywhere with free WiFi that I have ever seen has a sign out saying "Free WiFi".
My parents don't have a sign on their house that says "Free WiFi".
Luckly, they have me, so their WiFi isn't open, this doesn't mean would deserve to be taken advantage of otherwise.
Not to mention having SSIDs that make it clear which are the free Wi-Fi networks.
I've seen a ton of places without the Free WiFi signs (or at least not visible)
The mall and city being the most obvious. Does that mean that when I walk through the city, that I sometimes jump from the council provided publically available WiFi to an unsecured broadcasted private apartment WiFi?
No freakin' clue.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Isn't this all functionally irrelevant to the Google wi-fi case anyway? The data Google collected is data being actively blasted out over the airwaves. Your computer is literally receiving it all the time if it's there. If you do any one of a number of completely passive analysis techniques, you'll collect that data. You then have to go to some effort to delete it.
This is quite different to if you start transmitting and interacting with that network.
And all of this is entirely different to rape.
No, your Wi-Fi card does not operate in promiscuous mode normally, for a number of reasons. To actually capture all the packets flying around, you have to actively configure the card to do so.
Auto-connect is the tech equivalent of walking in every unlocked door with the assumption that place must be open to the public.
Where does the line get drawn? SSID off? Any encription used?
I could write a program that could auto-crack any WiFi network still running WEP(1) and SSID broadcasting. The encryption is laughable, it is like trying to have a private conversation by speaking in pig-latin. If Google makes this the default for their phones, does that obsolve you when you use it?
The card doesn't store packets. But to work as a wi-fi card it has to receive everything on the relevant channel, decode and discard things which are not meant for it. It just doesn't percolate up to the software layer.
What if I'm using promiscuous mode to measure my own wi-fi networks nearby and I start capturing someone else's data? What if I'm filming a home video and someone nearby starts yelling out all their credit card numbers and pins?
Privacy has always been an expectation you get from taking reasonable steps to create it, not a guaranteed right you get to just declare you have somewhere. It's why privacy in the home is, first and foremost, delineated by being in your home.
Someone who associates to, and interacts with computers on, an unencrypted wi-fi network has agency to not do that. Someone who inadvertently collects packets from an unencrypted wi-fi network only has agency to (1) realize they have and (2) delete them.
Again, I feel this goes back to social expectations based on context.
In a mall, museum or art gallery, I see no problem going through every open door if not marked with "Staff Only" or in someway indicating that it's not for public use.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/user/Mort-ZA/
@MortNZ
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
People do seem to be equating it to breaking and entering.
Yes, and there's been an argument for doing so put forth. Care to take a shot at arguing why it's not?
Would you feel the same way if the museum also had apartments peppered throughout, and there were doors clearly labeled "public"?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson