Google ordered to destroy Oz Street View data The Australian Privacy Commission has followed the lead of its global counterparts demanding that Google Australia immediately destroys payload data which was siphoned by the SteetView wi-fi data sucking car squads. In a letter sent to Google’s Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs Iarla Flynn, Privacy Commissioner …
Has "The Australian Privacy Commission" noticed that California based google is completely out of their jurisdiction?
The time to stop the data sucking was when google applied for the permits to bomb around Oz, snaffling pictures & etc., not after the fact.
The damage is done. You can't sweep the cats back into the worm can when the stable door is unlocked & wide-open. Australia's politicians should be ashamed of themselves for allowing it in the first place.
To be fair so should the USofA's politicians ,,,
"Has "The Australian Privacy Commission" noticed that California based google is completely out of their jurisdiction?" - From a legal standpoint, that's probably not true, as the data originated in Oz. And it would be odd for a legal department to make demands that are not backed up by law in any way.
But then; I'm not a lawyer.
Are you?
Secondly, it really doesn't matter to a degree. Let's say that you come in my house and steal a beer from my 'fridge before leaving. I say "give it back" and you say "no". Common Law would dictate that the beer is mine, despite the fact that you'd emigrated to California with it.
But let's say for a moment that the police didn't think that was the case, and I had now legal redress.
Then I say "Fine then. But you can't come in my house again."
Now imagine that happening to Google. In Australia.
Companies can hide behind laws and lobbyists as much as they like, but ultimately nation states MAKE the laws, and can decide who can and cannot operate within their company. And in the case of Oz, Google can't even go blubbing to the European courts asking them to let them get away with it.
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Re: Has "The Australian Privacy Commission" noticed that California based google is completely out of their jurisdiction?
We have (Google Australia) headquarters here in Sydney AU.
Google Australia Pty Ltd. Pirrama Road, Pyrmont, NSW 2009. Australia.
It's unclear if the street view wifi data slurp was sanctioned by headoffice in USA or AU headquarters.
I guess we'll find out soon enough.
IMPORTANT: to know & think about 'FACKBOOK bypassed some of its USA privacy laws and legal issues' by taking its Users data offshore where their privacy/data retention laws are more lax.
FB User data is stored in Ireland. See further link: http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Objectives/objectives.html
Google could possibly have some unknown offshore datastores, where they could have encryted duplicate stashes of all the worlds streetview wifi slurp tucked neatly away! and feel they too; may be above the law.
Hopefully the law takes this into account when drawing up its final compliance draft.
Just a thought! ;-)
Come on Google - show us your bits - we want to verify that they are all 0x00h - oh yes, and all your backup bits, and those cloudy thingy bits too ... you must certify that all bits are 0x00h - except those bits that were 0x00h of course - better set those to0xE5h just to be on the safe side. Doesn't the Privy Commission know that all they need to do is wear Koala trimmed tin-foil hats that they'll be safe as houses?
The data the gootards slurped exists on servers in California. It might be possible to make it "invisible" to folks in Oz ... but the rest of the world can still see it.
Including Oz citizens using off-shore proxies to view said data.
It's out. It's on TheIntraWebs[tm]. You can't make it go away. My 95 year old GreatAunt in Duluth might be downloading the complete content, as I type. And she might be planning to post it to Usenet tomorrow.
The OZ politicians should have made certain that they knew exactly what the gootards were doing. They didn't ... the gootards are not entirely without fault, but the OZ politicians are, by definition, demonstrably clueless when it comes to this kind of thing.
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