{"id":1126,"date":"2010-06-13T08:33:35","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T16:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2010-06-19T23:17:51","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T07:17:51","slug":"conor-changes-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=1126","title":{"rendered":"Conor changes his mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conor Cahill has taken a look at the Gstumbler <\/a>report.\u00a0\u00a0His conclusion is<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Given this new<\/span> information I would have to agree that Google has clearly stepped into the arena of doing something that could be detrimental to the user's privacy.<\/p>\n

Conor explains that,\u00a0“the information in the report is quite different than the information that had been published at the time I expressed my opinions on the events at hand.”<\/p>\n

He argues:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “We had been led to believe that Google had only captured data on open wireless networks (networks that broadcast their SSIDs and\/or were unencrypted). The analysis of the software shows that to be incorrect — Google captured data on every network regardless of the state of openness. So no matter what the user did to try to protect their network, Google captured data that the underlying protocols required to be transmitted in the clear.<\/li>\n
  2. “We had been led to believe that Google had only captured data from wireless access points (APs). Again the analysis shows that this was incorrect — Google captured data on any device for which it was able to capture the wireless traffic for (AP or user device). So portable devices that were currently transmitting as the Street View vehicle passed would have their data captured.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Anyone who knows Conor knows he is a gentlemanly model of how people should behave towards each other in our industry.\u00a0 I understand his position fully, and respect it.\u00a0 He says:<\/p>\n

    [Kim] seems to have a particular fondness for the phrase “wrong,” “completely wrong,” and “wishful thinking” when referring to my comments on the topic.\u00a0 In my defense, I will say that there was no “wishful thinking” going on in my mind. I was just examining the published information rather than jumping to conclusions — something that I will always<\/span> advocate. In this case, after examining the published report, it does appear that those who jumped to conclusions happened to be closer to the mark, but I still think they were wrong to jump to those conclusions until the actual facts had been published.<\/p>\n

    I can't disagree that\u00a0Google's public relations messages\u00a0may well have been\u00a0crafted to leave the impression that\u00a0their wireless\u00a0eavesdropping was only directed at network access points.\u00a0 But if you read them\u00a0extremely carefully you see they refrain from making any such claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    At any rate, Conor needs no defense and I accept his point.\u00a0\u00a0People who\u00a0took\u00a0the view that Google couldn't possibly have been doing what I claimed were acting based on the\u00a0messages the company conveyed.\u00a0 Sadly, if people of Conor's undisputed technical sophistication\u00a0are misled by\u00a0this kind of public relations campaign, the crafting of the information\u00a0might also be considered\u00a0suspect.<\/p>\n

    [More of Conor's post here<\/a>]<\/small><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Conor: Google has clearly stepped into the arena of doing something that could be detrimental to the user's privacy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[71,2,47,11,77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}