WHEN WILL THIS ILLEGAL ACTIVITY STOP ?

JUNE 6 2010

Police in Australia have been asked to probe Google as a result of complaints that Google had gathered personal data from unencrypted wi-fi services.


The alleged offenses occurred when Google vehicles were traveling to gather pictures for Street View, a Google service. It is alleged that while taking images, the vehicles also collected private wireless data from wi-fi services as it passed them.

The BBC also added that the Australian government said Google had committed "probably the single biggest breach in the history of privacy."

SNEAKY SNEAKY

AUGUST 11 2010

Google's Street View data-gathering methods are apparently at the center of a recent raid of the Web giant's main office in Seoul.


Korea's National Police Agency organized and carried out a raid whose aim was to obtain mass amounts of data from Google collected for the purpose of maintaining the company's cutting edge Street View mapping services.

Street View is one function of Google Maps, a free service offered that allows users to access mapping, neighborhood, and even visual information online at maps.google.com. The visual information is available via Street View, a groundbreaking and somewhat controversial feature that allows users to view up-to-date images of many city streets in major cities all over the world.


OCTOBER 19 2010

Canada: Google Street View breaks privacy laws

"Our investigation shows that Google did capture personal information — and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete e-mails. This incident was a serious violation of Canadians’ privacy rights."

The company, which first gained prominence for its superior Internet search engine, claims it was totally unaware it was collecting payload data in a number of countries along with their Street View videos. Payload data refers to the content of communications. The data was collected from publicly broadcast signals originating from unencrypted WiFi networks.

Several countries have called attention to the feature, which has sparked questions of privacy in the U.S. and U.K. and brought up other ethical issues around the world.

This case brings to lights the modern dilemma of ethics in emerging technologies where no laws exits to deal with rapidly evolving cutting-edge companies such as Google.

IF I SEE A GOOGLE STREET VIEW VEHICLE IN MY AREA, I WILL STAND IN FRONT OF IT AND BLOCK THE ROAD ........ AS LONG AS I CAN GET SOMEONE TO LOOK INTO WHETHER IT'S ACTING WITHIN THE LAW OR NOT ...... THEN JOB DONE.