Google becoming to big or possibly evil?

[S0ULphIRE]

Ya, and if I do a port scan, I'm just "sampling the ports" to eh. Nice twist of words.
They wrote a program to get information about networks, it's a hacking tool. Might not be a cracking tool, but it's definitively a hacking tool and now, no doubt classed under sniffers because it was able to see network traffic. Actively or Passively.

There is no doubt the media is trying to take hold of this. However this is still an issue because you don't expect a company of that stature to be collecting information this way. The way they did was how a Wardriving, unethical, loner cracker tries to get information.
They KNEW if they would have disclosed at the time they started doing Street View they would also be "sampling catagories..." they would have created a stir.


And regarding your last sentence of being illegal. In Aussie, I guess it isn't. But here in Canada is a totally different story.

Yeah I agree with you there, when I said 'not hacking' I really meant 'not cracking', but so few people know the difference. Lazy me

But re the wardriving thing. You said it's illegal to connect to a network without the permission of the owner. Technically at no point do I have to connect to your network to capture data from it.

 

[KSoD]

Did i specifically say that the program your mention was a hacking tool? No. I said that Hacking Tools are what is used to do such things. There is a difference, just like there is a difference between a hacking tool and a cracking tool.


Also as i said way back in my very first response to you SOUL, this may not be how it is in Australia, but that is NOT how it is in North America. This includes USA and Canada. Yes here it IS ILLEGAL to do these things.

Simply put i dont care if you have to connect or not. I dont care if it is a hacking tool or a cracking tool. I dont care if it is active or passive. The fact still remains this. There is absolutely NO reason why Google needed this information. There is NO reason why Google needed to log and store this data. It served no purpose for them with the function of the street view cars. Nothing else matters about how it was done. The fact reamins that there is no reason it should have been done.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

Yeah I agree with you there, when I said 'not hacking' I really meant 'not cracking', but so few people know the difference. Lazy me

But re the wardriving thing. You said it's illegal to connect to a network without the permission of the owner. Technically at no point do I have to connect to your network to capture data from it.

See this is where I believe we disagree
IMO, when you grab any sort or data, you still had to intrude on that network to gain the information from it. So technically (IMO again) you are connecting to the network.

But anyway, like Mak said...why even have that program running to begin with? And why deny, then change your story about using any sort of program like that.
The only sort of technology besides the picture/video taking would be geo-tagging (of some/any sort) to reference where this picture was taken.

In these days, ANYTHING can be blow out of proportion from OMG no front facing camera! to a OMG a security issue that has been around for 7 years! Why take that sort of chance? You are talking about peoples privacy (whether they know about the consequences of unencrypted wireless or not) it's still privacy that was exploited, denied and then admitted about.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Yep I'll admit straight away that what they did was very dodgy, all I'm trying to say is people have got the wrong idea in terms of exactly how much their privacy/security has been compromised.

 

[PP Mguire]

Edit: Nvm