-idézet a Sunday Times 2012. május 27-i cikkéből
....Google says the Street View project failed to appreciate what was being proposed. The fresh evidence, however, leaves Google with new questions to answer. Which managers or executives were told about this snooping software and when? And was this an institutional failure or a deliberate scheme to gather sensitive information that was abandoned in the face of international outrage.
Google has repeatedly stated that its strategy is based on tailoring the information it gives internet users ever more personally, using data it gathers from internet use on people’s buying habits, finances, travel patterns and relationships.Its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said in 2010: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions . . . they want Google to tell them
what they should be doing next.”
He also said in 2010: “Google policy is to go right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” The furore comes at a sensitive time for Google. It is under investigation in Europe for potential abuses of its dominant position in the marketplace and faces a similar inquiry in America.
The launch of Street View across Britain was controversial from the outset. The service provided a 360-degree virtual tour of almost every street, but campaigners complained that burglars might target some homes and others complained the cameras were filming over their garden fences. Google was forced to remove several photographs from its service, including a man leaving a sex shop, someone vomiting and a suspect being arrested.
At Broughton in Buckinghamshire, residents formed a cordon to try to block the Street View cars. The ICO said the cameras were not a threat to privacy and, despite the initial criticisms, the new Street View service proved hugely popular. Any faces are now blurred out. But the cars were not just taking photographs. Faced with questions from regulators, Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel for Google, admitted in April 2010 that they were also collecting computer network information, including network names and identifying numbers given to devices such as wi-fi routers.
It seemed harmless enough, but Johannes Caspar, a data protection regulator in Hamburg, Germany, was unconvinced. He demanded to inspect a Street View vehicle. This prompted a further admission. On May 14, 2010, Google said it had also been inadvertently collecting and storing personal data, such as email, photographs and texts, from networks that had not been secured with a password. It said the software that extracted personal data had been installed by mistake.
One British survey in 2010 found that as many as one in four homes had an unsecured network, which means they could have been targeted by the snooping software. The information — called “payload data” — was transferred from hard discs and uploaded to servers in America. Although the firm escaped a fine in Britain, other regulators dug deeper, demanding full access to the snatched files. They were shocked. Caspar described it as “one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen”.
The French authorities discovered the vehicles had harvested a range of personal and confidential information, including emails from a married man and a married woman seeking an extramarital affair, details of visits to websites that revealed sexual preferences, and documents from a health clinic. A Dutch investigation found the software intercepted chat traffic, passwords and entire documents, including a psychological report on a child with a serious reading difficulty and details of banking transactions.
The Canadian authorities found medical information. They stated: “We found complete email messages, instant messages and chat sessions.
........
Google has repeatedly stated that its strategy is based on tailoring the information it gives internet users ever more personally, using data it gathers from internet use on people’s buying habits, finances, travel patterns and relationships.Its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said in 2010: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions . . . they want Google to tell them
what they should be doing next.”
He also said in 2010: “Google policy is to go right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” The furore comes at a sensitive time for Google. It is under investigation in Europe for potential abuses of its dominant position in the marketplace and faces a similar inquiry in America.
The launch of Street View across Britain was controversial from the outset. The service provided a 360-degree virtual tour of almost every street, but campaigners complained that burglars might target some homes and others complained the cameras were filming over their garden fences. Google was forced to remove several photographs from its service, including a man leaving a sex shop, someone vomiting and a suspect being arrested.
At Broughton in Buckinghamshire, residents formed a cordon to try to block the Street View cars. The ICO said the cameras were not a threat to privacy and, despite the initial criticisms, the new Street View service proved hugely popular. Any faces are now blurred out. But the cars were not just taking photographs. Faced with questions from regulators, Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel for Google, admitted in April 2010 that they were also collecting computer network information, including network names and identifying numbers given to devices such as wi-fi routers.
It seemed harmless enough, but Johannes Caspar, a data protection regulator in Hamburg, Germany, was unconvinced. He demanded to inspect a Street View vehicle. This prompted a further admission. On May 14, 2010, Google said it had also been inadvertently collecting and storing personal data, such as email, photographs and texts, from networks that had not been secured with a password. It said the software that extracted personal data had been installed by mistake.
One British survey in 2010 found that as many as one in four homes had an unsecured network, which means they could have been targeted by the snooping software. The information — called “payload data” — was transferred from hard discs and uploaded to servers in America. Although the firm escaped a fine in Britain, other regulators dug deeper, demanding full access to the snatched files. They were shocked. Caspar described it as “one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we had ever seen”.
The French authorities discovered the vehicles had harvested a range of personal and confidential information, including emails from a married man and a married woman seeking an extramarital affair, details of visits to websites that revealed sexual preferences, and documents from a health clinic. A Dutch investigation found the software intercepted chat traffic, passwords and entire documents, including a psychological report on a child with a serious reading difficulty and details of banking transactions.
The Canadian authorities found medical information. They stated: “We found complete email messages, instant messages and chat sessions.
........