Sure, Google's coming to town and we fought to get them and it's supposed to bring ultra-fast data transmission to and for us but as The Star reported Sunday (and is still online now, see link below), they were fined for some of the data collection an engineer of theirs captured but just what he captured was far more revealing--and worse:
"A rogue engineer, not identified publicly by Google, wrote software aimed at tapping into transmissions known as captured payload data. That included passwords, addresses, phone numbers, medical records, emails and search history from consumers who had not sealed their private Wi-Fi networks behind some form of password protection or encryption."
A couple notes: First, they were only fined a paltry $25,000. For a firm as big and powerful--and rich--as Google, that's chicken feed. Much worse is getting caught and having this information become public.
Second is the fact that it makes me wonder if this engineer was really, in fact, "rogue." He did this of his own volition and not at the direction of his boss and the company? Right. I'm skeptical, at least.
"Google said it never intended to pile up that sort of information. Rather, Google has said it was simply logging the whereabouts of the nation’s sundry wireless Internet access locations."
Yeah, well, maybe. We'll see, huh?
More from the Star's article: "Asked Sunday about the nature of data that might be collected by its Internet service in Kansas City, a Google spokeswoman said in an email: 'We have nothing specific to announce right now about Google Fiber, but we build transparency, choice and security into our products because we believe that’s what matters to our users.'”
Right. "I love you" and "The check's in the mail", too, while we're at it.
"The FCC report, released Saturday with only names redacted, says the rogue engineer told a senior manager and one other engineer that the code he’d written was collecting the personal information."
The computer engineer wrote the program to collect the personal information for his own amusement and entertainment?
That seems suspect, at least.
Anyway, welcome to town, Google. Thanks for selecting us. We appreciate it greatly, we really do.
It reminds me of Tina Turner's song. So here, from the Kansas City metropolitan area to Google:
Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/29/3583087/fcc-report-describes-private-data.html
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