Searching

Searching was Originally Posted on March 9, 2013 by lavarock

I went to bed early and the dogs woke me up just after midnight to go out. When the sun went down it was quite cloudy and I figured too much so that there was no reason to look for the comet. However, now that it is probably below the horizon, the wind has picked up and the sky is very clear. I am seeing a “boatload” (a technical term” of stars tonight that I don’t normally see. So many in fact, that I don’t see Orion as easily as most nights.

So the dogs have run off, lured I’m sure by the smell of avocados or the excitement of browsing in the dark. When I was a kid, my older Sister and I would do something called “night games”. We didn’t go out together but once, but on occasion, we would slip out and browse the neighborhood, dodging the lone car or dog and just wander to see what happens out there at night. Think of it as a stroll along the beach in the moonlight, without the moon or beach and being a bit more furtive than a stroll. THAT was a night game.

So anyway, that brings me to the real reason for the blog entry. I see they are still talking about the Google lawsuit about Google listening in to routers while they were taking Google Earth photos. SIGH!

It amazes me that people who comment on news stories go off on tangents and don’t have all the data. Even the news agencies grab a particular slant to a story without understanding.

The way I understand it, an engineer had some code that could listen and record parts of data that were available on WiFi routers. Google says that they discovered they were capturing the data and stopped it. Self reporting. Then the lawsuits started.

When you set up a wireless router, you are encouraged to secure the wireless part. The router has what is called a SSID which might be the model of router, or some string that identifies the Wifi band of frequencies it uses. This helps people find a hotspot or wireless connection to connect to and it might be configured to say “Walmart” or “Starbucks”, etc. Think of it as putting your street address on your mailbox so that someone driving past can find you. You are also encouraged to secure your connection. That is like putting up a chain link fence on your driveway, locks on your doors and a NO TRESSPASSING sign. There would be no way without lots of illegal hacking, to get any readable data from your router.

Well what Google did, was take photos of the outside of each house for their Google Earth service. Some people say Google should not be doing this, yet real estate agents and neighbors may have been doing this for decades.

Google also took equipment that could find the SSIDs that were broadcast. You cellphone, laptop and tablet do the same things. Go outside Starbucks and look for a hotspot. When “Starbucks” pops up and you are asked to connect, that is the same thing Google did. They used their GPS from satellites to note where these routers were and save the coordinates and names. If the router was unsecured, it also captured a bit of traffic running through the router. Google said when they realized they were also capturing data, they fixed the problem but reported to authorities that it had happened. They could have just quietly deleted it, but did not.

So, why did Google even listen to SSID’s? Well if you have an Android phone, you have some of that data at your fingertips and may be using that technology. To help find stores in a Google search or in navigation, you have 3 choices. You can use the data supplied by the telephone provider of the cellphone service. Each telephone company can tell generally where you are in the world by triangulating your signal strength at each of the cellphone towers you are hitting at one time. By storing the last xx points of data they can even tell which direction and how fast you were going. Even if you tell your cellphone not to allow the phone company to use this information, it is available to 911 personnel to help find you. This data is fairly course.

Then there is satellite data. If enabled, your cellphone may be able to access the GPS satellites circling the globe. They can pinpoint you to within feet of your location. When I use GPS satellite service on my cellphone, it can accurately show which side of the house I am at. But decoding satellite data is a huge power user and will drain your cellphone battery pretty quickly. In fact, my cellphone reminds me of that when I enable GPS.

The third location service is the router SSIDs Google collected. here is their explanation:

To improve your use of location-based services, Google, as a location service provider, uses publicly broadcast Wi-Fi data from wireless access points, as well as GPS and cell tower data.

Location services play an important part in enabling many of today’s most popular location-aware applications, in particular on smart phones, laptops and other devices that are WiFi enabled. The inclusion of your WiFi access point in the Google Location Service enables applications like Google Maps to work better and more accurately.

Only publicly broadcast Wi-Fi information is used to estimate the location of a device.

So, in my analogy, Google drove down the street taking photos of houses, wrote down the address off your mailbox (and perhaps your name) and then by mistake, allowed its drivers to make a note that they heard arguing from your house or saw toys in the front yard, as it passed. Is this any different from your neighbors noting the same thing every day compared to Google doing it once?

In fact, if you broadcast your SSID, AND do not have an encrypted WiFi signal, the kids next door to you may be using your signal to download porn.

Think of yourself sitting out a supermarket with a cellphone, trying to get a connection to watch American Idol, while your spouse shops. You see a list of connections pop up. One is called WalMart, one Safeway and one called Fred. None of them are secured and you can connect to either. You choose Fred because it is strong. You watch your show not realizing that Fred is wondering why his data connection is slow all of a sudden.

The way to stop people from using your conenction is to hide it and encrypt it. THEN it is definately a crime if someone breaks in. It is the same as putting up that chain link fance over your driveway. If you don’t is it a crime that people come up the driveway and knock on your door, or note the name on the mailbox on the side of your house.

If you don’t want people doing that, put up a warning, a no trespassing sign. For routers, a no trespassing sign is a) Not broadcasting an SSID and b) encrypting your signal.

My opinion is that Google did nothing wrong.