Wardriving the planet: Google Street View style
Most people love the Street View function in Google Maps, and rightly so. It’s a neat gimmick at the very least, and if you find yourself in an unknown area, it can actually be useful. It’s helped fight crime, by helping police rescue an allegedly kidnapped girl, but the Street View cars have been at the centre of controversy before, including snapping pics while driving along private roads, killing Bambi and more.
This this now includes the Street View cars operating as the world’s largest fleet of wardriving vehicles. Wardriving started as a geek hobby where friends would drive around town logging wireless access points and computers. There are websites dedicated to showing where open access points are available, and some people actually run a separate WLAN router to work as an open hotspot. This activity was much more prevalent before smartphones with decent data plans started becoming commonplace, but it still exists.
In Google’s case, as their cars make their rounds snapping pictures they also record all WLAN networks and visible MAC hardware addresses. This is relatively harmless (though a little creepy), since Google hasn’t made that information publicly available, but Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar isn’t too happy about it. In fact, he’s horrified…
“I am appalled… I call upon Google to delete previously unlawfully collected personal data on the wireless network immediately and stop the rides for Street View…” [from The Register]
Although there are no laws out there specifically against wardriving, the sheer scope of the data collection has just added to the argument of those concerned with privacy, especially in the light of the cavalier attitude Google has shown towards the subject in the past.
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