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Privacy rights

November 11, 2010
Google’s ‘Street View’ Mapping Program Again Under National Scrutiny
Google's Street View project may not have greatly troubled the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but as The Washington Post reports the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is taking a different tack. The FCC, the newspaper reports, has launched an investigation into whether the Street View mapping program violated any communications laws when it apparently inadvertently sucked up personal information such as e-mails and passwords from unsecure Wi-Fi networks.
The announcement follows the FTC's decision to close an inquiry into the Street View project, and news of international governments ramping up their criticism of the mapping program, which was launched in 2007 to gather street-level images from the U.S. and 30 other countries.

The New York Times reports, Google cars "were also recording information about Wi-Fi networks in nearby homes and businesses, data that can be used to help mobile devices determine their locations. But Google went beyond noting the existence of such networks and recorded information that was sent over them."

In a statement regarding its investigation, Michele Ellison, chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau, said, "Last month, Google disclosed that its Street View cars collected passwords, e-mails and other personal information wirelessly from unsuspecting people across the country."

But, as The Post notes, the FCC has not provided much more about its investigation. Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) told the newspaper, "Intercepting communications traffic is a serious crime in the United States."

Earlier this year, EPIC urged the FCC to open an investigation into Google's Street View program. In its letter, EPIC asserts that Google's collection of personal information "could easily" amount to a violation of a federal wiretap law. Rotenberg told The Post that the act is "one of the strongest privacy laws we have because of the strong privacy presumption in network communications."

Authorities in Britain, Germany and Canada have raised concerns about the Street View program and violations of privacy.

Google issued a statement yesterday saying it was "profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks."

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Tags:
Privacy rights, Technology and I.P., Electronic privacy, FCC, FTC, Google Street View software, Marc Rotenberg
November 5, 2010
Scrutiny of Google Street View Goes International
Days after the Federal Trade Commission closed an inquiry into Google's Street View mapping service, the British government accused Google of committing a "serious breach" of privacy laws by collecting personal information exposed while gathering data for its online maps, The New York Times reports.

Google said the information was collected inadvertently, when camera-equipped Street View cars, taking photos and gathering wireless network location information, intercepted e-mail messages, passwords and other personal information from unsecured Wi-Fi systems, The Times reports.

Several states, led by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, called on Google in July to release more information about the program. The FTC closed its investigation after Google agreed to adopt new privacy procedures, but Blumenthal, who was elected U.S. Senator for Connecticut this week, said the multistate investigation will continue.

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office opted not to fine Google following a promise by Google not to repeat its "mistake," but a number of other European countries are still investigating the practice, The Times reports.

The EU proposed rules Thursday that would give users the right to "permanently delete already submitted personal data" and require user consent before companies such as Google or Facebook can use or process data in any way, The Wall Street Journal reports.

A column in The Washington Post suggests the U.S. and European responses to Google's actions demonstrate a "an increasing gap between regulators in the United States, where the freewheeling Internet culture has birthed many of the social networking sites and search engines used worldwide, and governments in Europe and Canada, which tend to be much more aggressive about privacy."

Tags:
Privacy rights, Technology and I.P., Electronic privacy, Google Street View software
August 10, 2010
Google Doc and Interviews Show Company Struggle Over Privacy, WSJ Reports
The cyberspace advertising giant Google is facing internal struggles over how "far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels - the vast trove of data it possesses" about users' online activities, reports The Wall Street Journal's Jessica E. Vascellaro.
Reporting on a 2008 confidential "vision statement," the WSJ says the document provides "a candid, introspective look at Google's fight to remain at the vanguard of the information economy."

The Google document asserts that the company's database is "the BEST source of user interests found on the Internet," and advances ideas on how to take advantage of the situation, WSJ reports.

The article continues:

The most aggressive ideas would put Google at the cutting edge of the business of tracking people online to profit from their actions. A data-trading marketplace, for instance, would allow personal information from many sources - including Google - to be combined and used for highly personalized tracking of individuals.

Beyond information gleaned from the vision statement, interviews with current and past Google workers reveal an internal and ongoing struggle over concerns about users' privacy and the potential for company profits.

"In short," the WSJ piece concludes, "Google is trying to establish itself as the clearinghouse for as many ad transactions as possible, even when those deals don't actually involve consumer data that Google provides or sees. The further step in that progression would be for Google to become a clearinghouse for everyone's data, too. That idea, also laid out in the vision statement, is still being considered, people familiar with the talks say. That would put Google - already one of the biggest repositories of consumer data anywhere - at the center of the trade in other people's data as well."

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Tags:
Privacy rights, Technology and I.P., cyberspace, Google, Internet privacy, Privacy
July 22, 2010
Conn. AG Calls on Google To Release More Information on ‘Street View’ Program
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, leading a multistate investigation into Google's Street View software, urged the company to release more data about the software, including the names of the people responsible for its usage.
In a press release announcing his letter that was sent to Google earlier this week on behalf of the 37-state coalition, Blumenthal maintained that the Internet search company should have been aware that the software could ensnare personal data.

"If Google tested this software, it should have known all along that Street View cars [pictured] would snare and collect confidential data from homes across America. Now the question is how it may have used - and secured - all this private information," he stated.

In his letter, Blumenthal also asked Google to supply the names of the people responsible for the Street View software, Reuters reported. The news service states that Google has acknowledged that its Street View software, intended to use Wi-Fi spots to provide location information to smartphones, had collected personal information over a number of years. Reuters noted that Google is facing "an informal investigation into the matter by the Federal Trade Commission, a variety of probes overseas, and class action lawsuits." Additionally Blumenthal asks Google whether it "sold or otherwise used technical network information also collected."

Blumenthal states:

Google's responses continue to generate more questions than they answer. Our powerful multistate coalition - 37 states so far - is demanding that Google reveal whether it tested Street View software, which should have revealed that it was collecting payload data.

We are asking Google to identify specific individuals responsible for the snooping code and how Google was unaware that this code allowed the Street View cars to collect data transmitted over WiFi networks. Information we are awaiting includes how the spy software was included in Google's Street View program and specific locations where unauthorized data collection occurred.

We will take all appropriate steps - including potential legal action if warranted - to obtain complete, comprehensive answers.

Some of the states involved in the investigation include Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Texas, New York, Mississippi, Vermont Nebraska, Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Kansas, Montana and Rhode Island. The District of Columbia is also a part of the coalition.

Google spokeswoman Christine Chen told Reuters, "It was a mistake for us to include code in our software that collected payload data, but we believe we did nothing illegal. We're working with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns."

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Tags:
Privacy rights, Electronic privacy, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Google, Google Street View software, Privacy
May 25, 2010
A Pressing Need to Revive Privacy Rights
Guest Post
By Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Program. Stanley is author of a recent Issue Brief published by ACS entitled "The Crisis in Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence."
The privacy rights of Americans have come under a sustained assault in the past decade. In that time we have seen not only 9/11 attacks, but also a few additional, comparatively minor terrorist attacks, two wars, a constant stream of revolutionary new technologies, greatly expanded powers for our security agencies, and a relentless political drumbeat pounding on the supposed need to give those agencies even more powers to peer into our lives without due process or meaningful oversight.
Underlying all this, however, is a problem that pre-existed all of it: the fact that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fourth Amendment has gone badly off track. And that problem has intensified the erosion of our privacy caused by those other factors over the last 9 years.

The general consensus of a wide variety of commentators is that there are two principal problems with the Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence:

• The "third party doctrine," under which information shared with any third party loses all Fourth Amendment protection. Financial information held by your bank or medical information held by your doctor, for example has been exposed to a "third party," and under this doctrine is thus deemed to have been "given up" by you and therefore stripped of Fourth Amendment protection.
• The emergence of a circular standard of "reasonable expectation of privacy," under which Fourth Amendment protection only extends to those situations where an individual has an "expectation" of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. As a result of this approach, the Fourth Amendment as it is currently interpreted provides no protection against a wide array of intrusive searches.

What's needed is a broad revival of the Fourth Amendment in American law.

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Tags:
Search and seizure/Fourth amendment, Privacy rights, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, 4th Amendment, Guest Post, Jay Stanley, Privacy Rigths

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