Here is some background on the Google Street View WiFi issue by Roger Clarke, a well known Australian privacy expert. Roger points out that Peter Schaar, Germany's Federal Commissioner for Freedom of Information, was concerned about misuse of network identifiers from the very beginning.
I agree that the identifiers of users’ devices is the real issue.
And your invocation of “It reminds me of an old skit by “Beyond the Fringe” where a police inspector points out that “Once you have identified the criminal's face, the criminal's body is likely to be close by” does hit the spot very nicely!
You ask why the payload is getting all the attention. After all, it was the device-addresses that Peter Schaar first drew attention to. As I wrote here,
The third mistake came to light on 22 April 2010, when The Register reported that “[Google's] Street View service is under fire [from the German Data Protection Commissioner, Peter Schaar] for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users’ unique [device] addresses, as the car trundles along”.
As soon as Peter Fleischer [Google's European privacy advisor – Kim] published his document of 27 April, I wrote to Schaar, saying:
“Fleischer's document doesn't say anything about whether the surveillance apparatus in the vehicle detects other messages from the router, and messages from other devices…
“In relation to messages other than beacons, on the surface of it, Fleischer might seem to be making an unequivocal statement that Google does *not* collect and store MAC addresses.
“But:
- If Google's surveillance apparatus is in a Wifi zone, how does it avoid ‘collecting’ the data? [Other statements make clear that it does in fact collect that data]
- [In the statement “Google does not collect or store payload data”,] the term ‘payload data’ would most sensibly be interpreted as meaning the content, but not including the headers.
- The MAC-addresses are in the headers.
- So Fleischer's statement is open to the interpretation that header data of messages other than beacons *is* collected, and *is* stored.
“Google has failed to make the statement that connected-device MAC-addresses are *not* collected and stored.
“Because Google has had ample opportunity to make such a statement, and has avoided doing so, I therefore make the conservative assumption that Google *does* collect and store MAC addresses of any devices on networks, not just of routers.”
The document sent to the Commissioners added fuel to the fire, by saying “The equipment is able to receive data from all broadcast frames [i.e. not only beacons are intercepted; any traffic may be intercepted.] This includes, from the header data, SSID and MAC addresses [i.e. consistent with the analysis above, the MAC-addresses of all devices are available to Google's surveillance apparatus.] However, all data payload from data frames are discarded, so Google never collects the content of any communications.
Subsequently, on 14 May, investigations by Hamburg Commissioner Caspar led to the unavoidable conclusion that Fleischer's post on April 27 had been incorrect in a key respect. As Eustace put it, “It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data [i.e. message content] from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks”.
So I think there are a couple of reasons why the payload aspect is getting most of the press:
- The significance of identifiers isn't readily apparent to most people, whereas ‘payload’, like people's Internet Banking passwords, is easier to visualise. (Leave aside that only highly insecure services send authenticators unencrypted. Low-tech reporters have to (over-) simplify stories to communicate to low-tech readers
- A corporation appeared to have been caught telling fibs, constructively misleading the public and the media, and regulators
- That's what catapulted it into the news, and reporters feed off one another's work, so it's the payload they all focus on
- A final factor is that breaches of telecommunications laws may be easier to prove in the case of content than of device-identifiers.
The Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) stepped up the pressure in Australia late this week.
Firstly, we directly requested Google not to delete the data, and gave them notice that we were considering using a little-known part of the TIAA to launch an action. That was promptly followed by the NYT's report of the Oz Privacy Commissioner saying that the Australian data is in the USA. (The first useful utterance she's made on the topic – a month after this story broke, there's no mention of the matter on her web-site).
Secondly, we wrote to the relevant regulators, and requested them to contact Google to ensure that the data is not deleted, and to investigate whether Google's actions breached Australian laws.
