[AusNOG] Google creepier than Conroy?

[Mark Newton]

On 30/05/2010, at 8:10 AM, Bevan Slattery wrote:

> If this were the Federal Government conducting this war drive and taking
> user data, or perhaps another countries government (say China) taking
> this data from Australia, or perhaps organised crime (Russian mob) I
> wonder how the reaction would be?

I'm pretty sure those things have actually happened.  It's frankly inconceivable
to consider a world where they haven't, considering the relatively low resources
that'd be required to do it and the relatively high intelligence value of 
information gained from the scan.

We know that organizations other than Google have done this because iPhone
Location Services relies on WiFi SSIDs if WiFi is available.  Where'd they 
get their data from?  Google isn't the first.

So it'd be bizarre if ire was reserved for Google because they happened to
admit it.  I'm not sure that privacy is appropriately honoured if the reward
for showing more openness and transparency than anyone else is to have your
knuckles rapped by the regulator.  If I was following in Google's footsteps
I'd take heed of that warning and do my work covertly.

Privacy in 2010 is different from privacy in 2000 and 1990.  There's a
generational shift happening here, attitudes are changing in different
age groups, the relative importances of different types of data requiring
"protection" are in a state of flux.  Say what you like about whether it's
a good thing or not, but you can't deny that the Facebook Generation has 
a different attitude to privacy than the Gen-X's (who appear to get upset
about data cross-matching) and Boomers (who tend to get more annoyed about
junk mail than anything else)

I don't understand the implications of the shift yet, but I'm damn sure
that the regulators understand it even less.  They should tread softly.

  - mark

--
Mark Newton                               Email:  newton at internode.com.au (W)
Network Engineer                          Email:  newton at atdot.dotat.org  (H)
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