Judge Lets Wi-Fi Case Proceed Against Google

It looks like Google's legal team will be getting some overtime this summer.

Google Inc can be sued for allegedly violating federal wiretap law in a lawsuit over the data collection methods of its Street View cars, a judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Francisco late Wednesday rejected Google's request to dismiss the lawsuit.

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Well google shouldn't have taped into those wireless signals. I'm not saying that google hacked into them just saying that google shouldn't have been keeping tabs on what wireless was out there.

Also why was google doing this, if the vans used was doing the "street view" stuff then why in the hell where they recording wifi signals. Wifi - street pictures I don't see the link here.

I hope google gets in big hot water for doing this and yes I agree they violated the wire tapping laws and should pay accordingly.

Wizard220 said:

Well google shouldn't have taped into those wireless signals. I'm not saying that google hacked into them just saying that google shouldn't have been keeping tabs on what wireless was out there.

Also why was google doing this, if the vans used was doing the "street view" stuff then why in the hell where they recording wifi signals. Wifi - street pictures I don't see the link here.

I hope google gets in big hot water for doing this and yes I agree they violated the wire tapping laws and should pay accordingly.

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Don't buy into the FUD. Google, and half a million other companies, grab header information from wireless routers everywhere, so that it can be used to improve GPS services on mobile phones and laptops. The software they were using grabbed a minuscule amount of data past the headers (probably as a buffer to ensure that it always captured the entire header). If the router wasn't using any kind of security (even WEP would prevent it), parts of web pages, parts of unencrypted emails, or parts of unencrypted passwords could have been recorded. There is no way to search through the data they collected to find specific information. It was an accident, as soon as they noticed they were capturing 1% more data then they expected, they told everyone, stopped using the software (they weren't "found out", they noticed the error and made a public statement), and started deleting the data. Once they started deleting the data, they were accused of destroying evidence.

Christ this bullshit is getting old. There is so much misinformation being spread around about what was going on, its unreal.