In the past few weeks Google has been back in the news for their whole wifi slurping mess. First it was the FCC slap on the wrist $25K fine. More recently, Google disclosed the name of the programmer responsible for the wifi software. It turns out it was none other than Marius Milner of NetStumbler fame. And then there was the recollection that he wrote down in his todo list to speak to legal about possible privacy issues. Of course he never got this task. Geeze, over the years there are tons of things on my todo list that I never got done. I hope one of those items doesn’t lead to a big privacy lawsuit.
From a programmers perspective I see why this wasn’t too high on his list though. I mean the software might accidentally swipe a split second of network traffic. Further the chances that someone is doing something sensitive at that exact time is even lower. And even if they did swipe a username, password, birthday, or social security number, who cares? Your private information is going to be just a tiny speck compared to the universe-size mound of data they collect. And what are they even going to do with those split-second specks … if they ever come across them? Incorporate them into your online dossier so they can send you slightly more targeted ads?
This is just a huge mess that some people are making a big deal out of and as a result probably hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars have been spent of our hard-earned taxes to prove something ever so significant in the big picture. And that’s just in the US… World-wide who knows how much money has been wasted on this … only to distract people from focusing on real problems.
Anyway, now you know how I feel … how do you feel?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.#####
If there are other answers I may have missed or opinions you want to mention, please add them to the comments below. And as usual let us know if there are other poll questions you’d like to see us ask. Today’s post pic is from GeekWire.com. See ya!
