The attorneys hired by Google reckon that its harvesting operations intended for WiFi data will be judged in the proper area in the USA. This is the latest statement made by the firm, despite the fact that the hacks being taken at Google nowadays come non-stop. In fact, Europe, at present, is one of Google’s biggest court frenemies.
The Director of Public Policy of Google, Pablo Chavez said in a letter for the Congressman that harvesting any data from wireless networks, despite being unencrypted, was, and still is, legal in the United States. In fact, he was very direct in saying that he believes what they did was not in any violation with regards to American laws. They merely collected payload data from certain networks that have been readily configured to be publicly accessible. Since the networks were not secured with the means of any encryption technology, everything was accessible, even with the use of the user’s device.
However, he did submissively admit that the practice was a mistake on the part of Google. He even reiterates that sticking to the US laws and doing the right thing are two very different matters. What he considers as a mistake was the fact that they collected payload data. He ends his statement by profoundly saying the word “sorry”.
It was only very recently that the best law enforcement authorities in Connecticut, with a claim on thirty states, decided to launch a set of combined investigative procedures into how the street view fleet of Google was able to intercept and store certain communications only with the use of WiFi.
The French Data Protection has already found out that top secret passwords as well as emails were harvested. This is the main reason why Google is looked down upon in several of France’s neighboring countries. In fact, some have even blatantly expressed their anger towards the company and have vigorously warned numerous court actions.
However, Google remains, or, at least, claims, to be clean in such mess. They blame everything on a particular rogue software coder and strongly say that whoever was responsible for such mess will be subjected to internal disciplinary measures.
The Information Commissioner has already released a statement about accepting Google’s assurances, regarding the immediate destruction of any data that was collected from the United Kingdom.
Indeed, Google is in hot water these days, just because of a few things that some hired cars did. However, to date, Google assures that they have, and will, never intentionally collect or store any payload data from any WiFi site, such as personal information or log in pass keys. This was why it was a huge embarrassment for Google to admit that there really was a payload data collection that occurred.
Although Google might be able to get out of this dilemma because of their “It was all an honest mistake” admission, it seems that the company will be facing a huge downside caused by this mess.
The public now knows that Google develops services as well as products without being fully knowledgeable about everything that that particular product can do. Some critics have strongly shook their heads on this blatant display of desperation on Google’s part for collecting confidential data through illegal means, only to end up slapping their own faces and regret having done such collection.
