[AusNOG] Google creepier than Conroy?

[phil colbourn]

I did say 'if'. I think that a WiFi network was never envisioned by the
authors of the Act, and a telecoms system was meant to be something like a
PSTN - phone to network - phone (except the wires aren't included for some
reason).

Actually, I don't think that the Act covers all data either as it seems to
focus on person - to -person communications.

So I disagree with myself - not all data is 'communications' and so not
covered by the Act.

But, without reading the Privacy Act 1988, this may not be a good enough
defence.

On Sun, May 30, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Scott Howard <scott at doc.net.au> wrote:

> On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 9:59 PM, phil colbourn <philcolbourn at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I agree that if a WiFi access point is considered a telecommunications
>> system under the Act then intercepting any data that is for
>> another recipient is in breach of the Act.
>
>
> Define "intercepting".
>
> Wifi is a broadcast radio communication mechanism.
>
> Every client and every AP will receive and interpret every packet sent by
> every other AP within range.
>
> If your neighbor has a Wifi base-station running on the same channel as
> yours (or even possibly on a nearby channel), then your AP, your notebook,
> and very possibly your mobile phone is receiving, decoding, and acting upon
> every single packet that it sends.
>
> Is that "intercepting" ?
>
> Some of these packets from your neighbors AP will be dropped by your client
> - probably in hardware although not necessarily.  But some of the packets
> from their AP - probably around 100 of them every second - will be pass
> through to your OS.
>
> Is that "intercepting" ?
>
> On numerous occasions your OS will then display data from those packets on
> your screen, or log them to a file.  It'll do that whenever you ask is to
> display any networks that are in range, and possibly at other times as well.
> Turn on any form of wifi debugging and you're probably going to log a lot of
> those packets to disk very quickly.
>
> Is that "intercepting" ?
>
> If Google is to be believed (and I for one don't have any reason to doubt
> them), they intended only to capture and log the beacon packets. Given that
> every other computer within range would have also captured and acted upon
> those packets I really don't see how this could be considered "illegal" -
> it's a fundamental part of Wifi, somewhat equivalent to the house numbers
> printed on your letterbox.  Perhaps we can also claim invasion of privacy if
> they were to write down those street numbers as they drove past?
>
> What it seems they did wrong was to skip the filtering stage.  Anyone
> that's ever played with any low-level Wifi diagnostic tools will be able to
> tell you that it almost always requires _more_ effort to only dump beacon
> packets rather than all packets.
>
> Ohh.. and I hope nobody has a has ever physically plugged a computer into
> someone else network that used hubs, because exactly the same thing happens
> there.  Is that "intercepting"?
>
>   Scott.
>
>
>


-- 
Phil

http://philatwarrimoo.blogspot.com
http://code.google.com/p/snmp2xml

"Someone has solved it and uploaded it for free."

"If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to look."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke - Who does magic today?
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