back to article Korean cops raid Google

Police raided Google's South Korean offices today as part of their probe into the firm's Street View Wi-Fi data harvesting operation. The country is one of many running criminal investigations into the practice, which was revealed in June. "[We] have been investigating Google Korea on suspicion of unauthorised collection and …

COMMENTS

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  1. Nicolas Charbonnier

    Korean wants to steal Google secrets

    Clearly they used this bogus pretext as an excuse to break in and try to steal whatever trade secrets Google had on its Korean headquarters. The info which they then use for their own competitors.

    In general, governments aren't too keen with the giant US corporation be it Google, Facebook or other know too many personal details about all their citizen.

    1. DavCrav

      Yep

      Especially when they break the law. Dickwad.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm really glad...

    That the Information Commissioner's Office was satisfied on the basis of samples it had been shown by Google that no personally identifiable information had been harvested in the UK. That is really comforting to know.

    In just the same way as I'm really glad that Banks made such sterling efforts to weed out the dubious applications for loans for homes and property and got the economy into a mess.

    Were these samples selected by Google - Masters of Mathematics! - or by the Information Commissioner's Office (??)

    Move along now, nothing to see here...

    1. Arclight

      Nick nick

      Doesn't stop anyone from making a complaint to the plod though. I may be wrong here, but the Information Commissioners Office may not see anything wrong, but it doesn't mean anything if Google have actually broken the law, and anyone that believes that Google has illegally snooped their data have every right to make an official complaint to the police.

    2. Crofty616

      Title?

      I cant believe there is any reason for charges NOT to be made by the police, what a joke this country is.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Typical Korean nationalism

    This has nothing to do with wifi, privacy or anything, the Korean government will just use any excuse to keep foreign companies out of their market. Google has a paltry 2% market share there, while Naver their top Google-like search engine has 70%.

    Daum the other big Korean Internet mapping portal already has their version Street View for a long time and did anyone check if they kept a few wifi addresses on the way...

    Posting anonymously has they like to spend their time checking people around the web too...

    1. DavCrav

      Shock horror!

      American megacorp not market leader in every country shock! Film at 11.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      A tad paranoid?

      That makes no sense. If you want to keep a foreign company out of your country, surely its easier to prevent them opening in the first place rather than using some pretext to grab a handful of hard disks from an already established site? Many countries, Korea included, require various certifications and approvals to open a foreign owned company/subsidiary - simply concoct a reason to refuse the application.

      Besides, if they have a paltry 2% market share as you say, why bother with an excuse to keep them out? They're not exactly taking the local market by storm according to your own assertion!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Are you people blind?

    I think that the Korean government staged the raid to get their hands on the wireless data...

  5. James Woods

    google is the us government

    What they did was well within their rights. Whatever they may have wanted to 'steal' more than likely never should of been in googles possession to begin with.

    How the hell does a company go around the world collecting wireless data and than say oops we didn't know that's what we were doing and get away with it?

    Google offices need raided around the world, they raid us everyday with all their datamining.

    Let them have a taste of their own medicine. There is nothing a public search engine should have that isn't all able to be dumped into the public to begin with.

    We of course know that's not the playbook google uses and alot of what they have about us was illegally mined for advertising prospect.

  6. Bram
    Coffee/keyboard

    Thats life

    Google broke the law in a foreign country and being an American company they should know that everyone else (apart from their loyal underdog) would make a show of collecting their scalp (Microsoft and the EU battling over Internet browsers and media players).

    For all the good google has done it has also done a fair share of bad you ask all the small companies that can't get a hit out of google or all the money pouring out of the e-commerce world and into google's pockets.

    This is the cost of globalisation so just kick back and enjoy the ride, Im just waiting for Andriod to develop self conscienceness and judgement day to roll on.

  7. The Jase

    Koreans

    Have any of you seen how Koreans live? Most live in large apartment complexes (apartu's as they call them). In some areas you would be saturated with wireless signals. You can always get free wireless in Korea, there is always someone who doesn't secure their connection close by.

    Why would the Korean gov care about the wireless data?

    1. Crofty616

      Title Required

      Because when a Foreign company goes around your whole country taking it then its a little more serious than some dude in a car with a laptop outside someones house...

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