“Greater Choice”

http://parislemon.com/post/12859599499/greater-choice

by unalone • 15 years ago

79 82 15 years ago

dlikhten• 15 years ago

There's a bigger joke here. They are asking people WHO ARE ALREADY NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE ENOUGH TO ADD A WIFI ENCRYPTION to change their network SSID. I think .01% of the population will benefit.

Naturally opt-in < opt-out.

gravitronic2• 15 years ago

Encryption has nothing to do with it.

If your SSID is broadcast, without opting out they are adding the hotspot to their database.

In my neighbourhood about 95% of the AP's that broadcast SSID are encrypted, so this is a much wider group than just the open hotspots.

robert-boehnke• 15 years ago

The people that he refers to are the ones who had their data inadvertently collected by Google due to a lack of Wifi encryption.

This is what got the whole process of adding _nomap started.

eli4• 15 years ago

The issues got conflated. This whole thing came to a head when it was discovered that Google was inadvertently capturing stray packets as it drove by. Of course, Google doesn't want nor need bits of your stray data, but it became a story about reading your private messages.

The solution to not wanting to be mapped, is Google's Opt-Out procedure. The solution to not wanting other people to read your wireless data, is to properly use encryption.

eli4• 15 years ago

Yeah, but the problem was a bigger joke.

There are many serious threats to privacy in our increasingly networked world. Cataloging the location of public WiFi hotspots is not one of them.

(Also, I can't think of any other practical way for them to work an opt-out system? Mailing in your WAN MAC address?)

icebraining8• 15 years ago

There are many serious threats to privacy in our increasingly networked world. Cataloging the location of public WiFi hotspots is not one of them.

That wasn't the problem. Google sniffed and stored data packets, not just the location of the APs. And of course, a decent proportion of them were completely unencrypted.

See their own blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-...

Of course, whether should people have to encrypt their Wifi networks is debatable, but the EU authorities weren't pleased, so now Google is trying to play "extra nice" to calm them down.

eli4• 15 years ago

It was an accident. Google doesn't want your data packets.

But if you're concerned about bad guys stealing your wireless data, then it doesn't matter what Google does or opts you out of -- you need to use encryption.

sp3326• 15 years ago

That wasn't the problem.

Yes, it is. You're talking about a completely different problem. Anyway even if my network is encrypted, it won't keep Google from logging my SSID and location.

rickmb2• 15 years ago

This isn't "calming them down". This is throwing gasoline onto the fire.

Google should understand that in countries where privacy is considered an fundamental right, the default answer when it comes to gathering this kind of information is "no", no matter how minor the issue may be.

Telling those authorities "we're gonna do it anyway" is a major provocation.

brendn• 15 years ago

A web form to submit a MAC address would make more sense, but if this were a serious problem the solution would be to go to the manufacturers. A standard for broadcasting an "opt-in" bit configurable in the router's admin interface might be reasonable.

(But standards take time to develop and implement. Not to mention that the existence and location of certain MAC addresses is far from the biggest fish to fry, right-to-privacy-wise.)

eli4• 15 years ago

Perhaps, but I think determining the wireless MAC address of your router would be a much more difficult technical challenge compared to changing the SSID.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

Cataloging the location of public WiFi hotspots is not one of them

Is it only "public" hotspots that they are cataloging? Are any access point that broadcasts it's SSID?

clebio2• 15 years ago

Why would the opt-in version of the exact same solution not work? You add '_domap' to your SSID to opt-in. If you don't add that, Google agrees to remove your SSID from their records (this does require that they periodically re-scan APs, of course). Am I honestly missing something?

Game_Ender• 15 years ago

Very few people would actually do that, destroying the usefulness of the data they are collecting.

ErrantX2• 15 years ago

Great; so what is the alternative solution? I've been mulling it over and there simply doesn't seem to be a way.

Google did indeed make a massive cock up over collecting the Wifi data - and taking them to task on that is a good thing.

Demanding a magic opt-out of public data seems to be a case of privacy gone mad.

First we had PC. Now we have privacy. What is it about these things that always get taken to the extreme. sigh

NelsonMinar• 15 years ago

Two alternative that don't require users rename their entire networks. One, opt-out via MAC address. Or two, opt-out via geofencing: let me pick my house off a map and type my SSID. Both of these solutions could be automated by a little program that ran once in the user's network. I'm sure the clever engineers at Google could come up with even better solutions if they actually cared about a usable opt-out solution.

underwater3• 15 years ago

So to stop Google recording our location and SSID we should give them our location and SSID?

DrJokepu• 15 years ago

While I think that having to change the SSID is a lame solution, the problem with your suggestion is that there's no way to ensure that the person opting the networks out actually has control over the network; it would take minutes for 4chan or other mischievous people to opt-out whole neighborhoods.

ugh2• 15 years ago

What should Google do? Yes, the solution they propose is horrible and hardly anyone will be able to understand it. The important question is whether people really should be able to not have their access points mapped.

SSIDs are public, just like house fronts. I think the European data protection hounds should calm down a little.

I think talking about data protection as a failed ideology is much more interesting than talking about the last convulsions of the same.

fl3tch2• 15 years ago

> SSIDs are public, just like house fronts.

Yet, they allow you to pixelate your house front in Europe. That's the cultural standard of privacy there, so it shouldn't be surprising that SSIDs matter to them.

Angostura4• 15 years ago

That's correct. They offer an opt-out mechanism.

Same here.

ugh2• 15 years ago

I’m German so don’t tell me about European cultural standards of privacy.

There was a huge outcry in Germany when Google announced that they wanted to start Street View there. Photographing the fronts of homes is perfectly legal in Germany (and will continue to be legal), the ability to opt-out was a concession from Google, not a legal requirement. That said, Google certainly caved in to prevent a Lex Google.

I despise the official German view on data protection that found its expression in this outcry, fueled by many politicians. To me it’s nothing more than thinly veiled anti-americanism and a reduction of data protection to limiting freedom and not the state.

Google’s freedom to photograph the fronts of homes or collect SSIDs is my freedom, too – at least if the law isn’t selectively enforced (and it shouldn’t be). Data protection’s main goal should be to limit the state and not my (and Google’s) freedom.

That’s what I mean by failed ideology of data protection:

1) Its meaning can easily be twisted and turned and consequently it can have perverse consequences.

2) Control over data is practically impossible and we should much rather try and find ways to better arrange us with a world in which privacy is hard or impossible to achieve.

feral2• 15 years ago

Whats the major problem with logging the location of a Wifi access point?

I understand Google screwed up in this area before, when they captured network traffic. (Even then, it seems they captured that data due to oversight, not some nefarious scheme.)

There are lots of huge privacy issues in the world; I don't think a database of approximate wifi locations ranks particularly highly. I don't care if Google map my hotspot, and I'm happy to have my phone locate quickly, when I'm out and about.

And they are now providing a way to opt-out, for the people that feel strongly about it; its not trivial to implement, but I can't think of a way of making it easier.

It seems a lot less complicated for an end-user than robots.txt is in the related scenario of web scraping.

That blog post is full of vitriol; I don't think its adding much constructive discussion, or insight; I think its just blowing things out of proportion.

sp3326• 15 years ago

If I'm using a mobile hotspot, it would be useless to log its location. Anyway, maybe I just don't want my home router on a Google map.

watty2• 15 years ago

It's not like they're breaking into your house and stealing private information. Your router is broadcasting your SSID.

ghurlman• 15 years ago

1. End users don't configure web servers 2. Since when is "it's too hard" an acceptable solution for HN or Google?

Have you ever tried to tell someone nontechnical how to reboot their router over the phone?

"Just unplug it and plug it back in" "Unplug what?" "The router - the thing with the network cables in it" "The one with the tv cable?" etc.

Now try to tell them how to reconfigure their SSID, and then reconfigure all their connected devices to match.

myspy2• 15 years ago

Exactly. Useless solution for the majority. But who gives a shit anyway? In tech it's hard to decide what's good for you and what not. Privacy is nothing trivial anymore. You are out there or you live in a forest without any technical device at all.

hello_moto• 15 years ago

Not to mention firmware updates or reset-ing the router back to factory default and forgot to do whatever Google suggested you to do.

Suddenly it becomes a burden.

feral2• 15 years ago

So, Google could be forced to not gather this information at all.

Whether its in the public interest is a tradeoff between the utility provided vs the privacy loss. I think its a net utility gain - I like my phone to resolve quickly, and see little downside - so I have no general objection.

Some people might object strenuously to this information being gathered; they now have a mechanism - albeit kludgey - to opt-out.

Could the opt-out be implemented better?

You say you don't accept 'its too hard' as an excuse. But sometimes there's a limit to how well a problem can be solved, given its importance and the set of people who care about it. You could build a physical switch on the router (perhaps even one that appends '_nomap' to the SSID). But we don't expect Google to ship everyone a new router, right?

If there's ever sufficient consumer demand, router manufacturers could add this feature. But there probably isn't going to be.

We live in a world where Telcos track and log our locations, to a resolution of the nearest cell, or nearer, all the time. They typically have our identity and demographic information. They know who we call and message, and for how long. I'm studying social network analysis, and you can infer an awful lot from data like this.

So, how do I turn my phone on 'do not track' mode?

I think its pretty decent of Google to enable this feature; yes, the solution is inelegant, but the people that care enough about this can probably figure out how to enable it.

I think anger about privacy violations should be directed at worse offenders.

rickmb2• 15 years ago

It's an invasion of the privacy of the owners of said access point because they neither asked not intended for their SSID and location to be put into Google's database.

It's as simple as that. In most Western countries, a citizens right to determine what happens with information about them is considered a fundamental right. The fact that the information is publicly available and easy to collect does in no way diminish that right.

It's what is done with that information what matters. And no owner of a WiFi access point ever intended their SSID to end up in Google's databases, and especially not related to their geographical location.

It crosses an ethical and possibly legal line that may not be recognized in the US, but is pretty plain and solid in many other countries. And these aren't technologically clueless countries: net neutrality is the law in the Netherlands.

Google knows all of this, and yet chooses to publicly tell these countries to go fuck themselves. Smooth move.

icebraining8• 15 years ago

That's simply not true.

1) Just because you never ask or intend for that, doesn't mean that's your right: TV channels don't have to ask each person that passes on the street and happens to be filmed for authorization. There's a thing called expectation of privacy.

2) Google, at least in some countries, did in fact request permission from the appropriate bodies: here in Portugal we have a "National Commission for Data Protection" and they did authorize Google to collect that data and even to photograph the streets.

mef• 15 years ago

Where is the outrage over the multiple wifi access point databases which already exist and _don't_ give anyone the ability to opt out? (skyhook, navizon, etc)

icebraining8• 15 years ago

The outrage was over the data packets Google collected. Now they're being forced to implement this as a punishment, it seems, more than because of any actual problem with SSID location recording.

jeffdechambeau• 15 years ago

Serious question: why is MG Siegler taken seriously at all? So far as I know he has no credentials, is incapable of actual analysis, and takes forever to get to the point. Am I missing something?

myspy2• 15 years ago

He is a good writer, great analyst and knows how to get to the point. You just feel offended when someone is right and you can't cope with it.

arron61• 15 years ago

Great analyst? He's basically an apple PR personnel. Most of his posts van be summed up into Apple can do no wrong. Anyone opposing apple is wrong and stupid. There is no logic. It's blatant and it's almost like he does it for page views

samirahmed• 15 years ago

He is an okay writer. Has highly biased opinions which dictate his analysis. I seldom write things that are non critical of Apple.

libraryatnight• 15 years ago

I've always assumed it's because his hyperbole incites reaction, lots of comments and all that. His articles mostly end up being completely worthless and sensational in my opinion. I try to avoid them, but occasionally I stop in to check and it's always the same reaction, "Oh, he's still doing that."

yanw• 15 years ago

If the solution is not ideal it's only because the problem is imaginary.

Why are we pretending that logging locations of public WiFi hotspots is even an issue?

sp3326• 15 years ago

The outrage isn't about about public hotspots. It also logs your home SSID, even if the network is encrypted. That's what people are mad about - having their home routers on a Google map.

watty2• 15 years ago

I don't get it - when I click on available wireless networks I see all of my neighbors SSID names, should I not read them? These are not private, the default setting of a router is actually to broadcast this name.

So, perhaps we should advocate router manufacturers to change the default SSID broadcast?

Angostura4• 15 years ago

Their home router SSID isn't on a map. Look, my home router's SSID is ListerNet. I'm in London, UK somewhere. Where am I?

bstar77• 15 years ago

I don't understand why so many people are defending Google here. The reality is that the vast majority of these so called "public" access points are going to be unassuming users that have unwittingly been added to Google's public wifi grid that basically invites people to use their wifi as a public service.

Please correct me if my assumptions are wrong. This feels like an incredible invasion of privacy. It's one thing for a user to ignorantly leave their wifi unprotected and have a few people take advantage, but it's another to look at it as an untapped resource and build a business model around it.

brlewis• 15 years ago

My understanding is that Google's servers keep the wifi location data. An app sends in nearby SSIDs, and Google sends back a probable latitude/longitude. I don't think they keep a database of public access points.

elisee• 15 years ago

The mapping is not done so people can find your WiFi and connect to it. It has nothing to do with whether your access point uses encryption or not. It's just a way to do triangulation using known anchor points.

Suppose there's 3 access point advertising their existence around you (most access points do by default). If you know their coordinates on earth and their relative signal strengths, you can pinpoint a pretty accurate position of yourself. Kinda like GPS.

Google screwed up by collecting more data than they should, and now they are doing a little dance to appease the lawyers.

The solution is indeed a joke, because there's no problem. It makes no sense to not want people to pinpoint an access point on a map, when it's actively advertising itself. The way I see it, there's no privacy breach whatsoever.

The real problem (Google collecting too much personal data) has already been fixed.

Angostura4• 15 years ago

Is your argument that this is an invasion of privacy? If so how.

Or is your argument that Google is using the 'untapped resource' of Router location to build a business.

If the latter, do you have the same issue with atlas publishers who without my permission put my road into their big printed books - indeed mapped out the whole of London without a city-wide referendum to check whether this was OK.

jacobwil• 15 years ago

That isn't the least bit of what's happening here. Google's streetview cars simply map your router's SSID (actually, as far as I can tell, it's the MAC address) to coordinates that the car's GPS provide. They allow for devices to determine their location more quickly than acquiring a GPS lock and more accurately than relying on cellular tower triangulation. When you combine all three, you get phones that can figure out their current location quickly and accurately.

At no level is google telling people where to find free WiFi. They simply provide a correspondence between MAC addresses of nearby routers and latitude-longitude.

interlagos• 15 years ago

Your assumptions are completely wrong. This is nothing to do with whether an access point is public, private, encrypted or not. It is not used to populate a database of public wifi points.

Instead it's used to correlate publicly transmitted SSIDs with longitude and latitude. Such a database allows wifi-capable devices (including your laptop's browser) to somewhat reasonably geolocate without GPS (or, more common, more quickly but less accurately before a GPS fix is available).

Anyone outraged about this needs to extend the same outrage to Apple, Skyhook, among many others doing exactly the same thing. With no mechanism of opting out at all (because, really, opting out is ridiculous anyways).

HN, to some degree, is hijacked (including its own administration that hellbans people who hold contrary opinions). Somehow this useless rant by Siegler -- about a complete non-issue -- sits at #4. Another useless article, quoting Gruber, hit the front-page yesterday.

If I could exclude the votes of anyone who hit up arrow on either of those, HN would be a much more interesting site.

benwerd• 15 years ago

I'm almost convinced that the Google solution is a demonstration of intent to overcome legal hurdles in places like Germany. It's not at all a real solution that real people will use.

alttag• 15 years ago

1. So, how does this "solution" affect networks they've already mapped? It seems odd this would be proposed after the fact.

2. Why should I have to change my name to not be mapped? From a rights perspective, if you're doing something with my info, shouldn't the onus of changing primarily be on you?

dayjah• 15 years ago

My mother would fail to be able to do this. Not just because it's a technical challenge, but also because her ISP sends out routers which are preconfigured with a SSID to make setup _easier_, you just plug and play. No admin console, no telnet (TBH: I didn't look to hard for either).

Perhaps GOOG feel privacy is only the concern of people that have enough nouce to setup a wifi router? 100% of the routers at residential buildings I connected to wifi at on my recent trip to the UK were this type.

chc• 15 years ago

If you feel that strongly about this, you can learn how to configure a router or you can find someone to do it for you. If you don't want to do either, it doesn't seem like this is terribly high on your list of priorities.

steve8918• 15 years ago

When the wireless router broadcasts the SSID, is that all it broadcasts or does it also broadcast its MAC address, etc? How can you tell the difference between one "linksys" router and another one, also broadcasting "linksys"?

rwar• 15 years ago

My understanding is that the wireless router broadcasts a packet and that packet contains the SSID and MAC address.

buster• 15 years ago

" Apple does the same thing. So does Skyhook (which is suing Google for ditching their location database to build their own). So do others. It’s a good idea. And it makes locations services much better."

versus

"The solution is a joke."

Then he rants about how opt-out is bad and opt-in doesn't work. So what is it?

If someone cares enough to opt-out then he'll be able to change his SSID. Be happy that Google doesn't let you register your access point with Google and opt-in/out there (and while doing that mapping your identity to your accesspoint and location).

I don't see an easier way of opt-out. And i understand that opt-in is not feasible.

By the way, you have to explicitly enable this data gathering while setting up your phone (on android), so part of the data gathering is to blame for the user that enabled it, i guess. ;)

Atropos• 15 years ago

This opt-in/opt-out is a false dichotomy in my opinion, because probably 90% of the population don't know this issue at all. So it doesn't seem to matter much, how difficult the opt-out mechanism is. Likewise, if you use an opt-in mechanism, practically nobody will opt-in, although if everybody could weigh the cost/benefits the result might be different.

Which is fine, it would be a huge price on society if everybody had to educate themselves on these small issues all the time. This is an area where regulation is the best choice. As long as there is no law against it, I can't see how it google is in the wrong here?

dguido• 15 years ago

The fact that certain people think they're entitled to privacy while broadcasting an access point name over a shared wireless frequency is a joke.

Groxx• 15 years ago

That's a horrible solution, but I really don't know what the problem is. Yes, they inadvertently collected extra packets - and they stopped. Why no outrage against Apple or Skyhook?

gsoltis• 15 years ago

Thought experiment: Imagine the same product, determining the location of a mobile device, through a different mechanism. How about we replace SSID with paint color of a building, and the mobile device's wifi antenna with the same device's camera. From there, the service works more or less the same. The sensor (camera) sends google a snapshot of its current surroundings. Google compares this pattern of colors to a map it has created by cataloging building colors around the world and makes a best effort to find a match and provide a location based on that.

Assuming you are ok with google street view (if you're not, I assume they same reasons would apply to SSID mapping), what then is the difference between the color of your house and your SSID?

And to head off one possible reply, the data collection issue is orthogonal to the mapping of SSIDs. I don't think anyone is saying that it was ok to capture data packets, but for the purpose of this thought experiment, let's pretend that google had properly performed the SSID mapping and stored only SSID and location of their collection vehicle.

metel• 15 years ago

Huh.

I never thought I'd live to see arch Apple loyalist Matt Siegler post something negative about Google.

I honestly can't remember the last time one of these well-known Apple loyalists lashed out at Google...

It's extremely noteworthy.

“Greater Choice”

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