[AusNOG] Google creepier than Conroy?

[Noel Butler]

On Sun, 2010-05-30 at 23:05 +1000, Robert Loomans wrote:


> I *do* have a doubt that detecting SSIDs and MAC addresses is in the same ballpark. They are publicly broadcast in the clear as part of the protocol: they are the wifi equivalent of street numbers and building/house names visible on the street. If you are not allowed to use that data, then you'd be violating the law every time you opened your laptop, turned on your smartphone, etc and saw a different SSID. Have a look at http://www.skyhookwireless.com/, it's used by Mac OS X, iPhone, various web browsers, etc. and it correlates GPS data and SSIDs and MAC addresses and feeds the results back to the Skyhook servers.
> 
> As for "taught a darn good lesson", I don't like that this is typically being said like they want to see a public spanking or a public lynching.
> 


I see no valid reason as to why they need to do this in the first place.
They come across as creepy snoops, it may only be morally wrong to
"drive around with full intent to record any and all wireless AP
SSID's", but none the less, they should be spanked for it.
Conspiracy hat on now, what if, the information was passed on to big
brother, you know, the world police force (U.S Govt), hell, who says
they never asked google to do it in the first place, heck, I dunno,
maybe I just watched too many episodes of the X files? :)  /conspiracy
hat off
Cheers




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