back to article Street View spies a €2.4m fine

The Spanish Agencia de Protección de Datos (Data Protection Agency) is demanding Street View be brought to book over its clandestine Wi-Fi slurping activities. The agency has requested a Madrid judge consider whether Google is guilty of two counts of "collecting and storing data without the owner's consent", and two counts of …

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  1. petur
    FAIL

    recording protected data?

    I don't think unencrypted wifi can be called protected data. Quite the contrary.

    1. Grease Monkey Silver badge

      Point

      I think you're missing the point of the word "protected". They don't mean physically protected, they mean legally protected.

      Let's say a colleague was viewinging some personal data on a client his monitor as part of her work and you took a peek over her shoulder would you be in breach of data protection laws? You would.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: 6,590 copies of Don Quixote

    Apart from the bit about windmills nobody knows sod all about the book.

    I've yet to meet or hear of anybody who has actually read Don Quixote. The reason being that Spanish books are incredibly boring. Every single book by any Spanish author is, in fact, so incredibly boring that a Vogon could read it as a sleeping aid.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Chris W

      I've read it. It's very funny. It's considered the first Western novel because it's very similar to many other modern Western novels. Do you often criticise things your haven't actually experienced? Casual bigotry not withstanding, are you aware that this habit makes you look like a bit of a wanker?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "I've yet to meet or hear of anybody who has actually read Don Quixote."

          "I have lived in Spain for over 20 years, my wife is Spanish as are my children, all my friends and work colleagues"

          Then you'd be aware that the Don Quijote is a common text in Spanish schools. The two quotes are mutually incompatible.

          Generally, when finding oneself in a hole, it's best to stop digging.

    2. lglethal Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Couldnt disagree more...

      I know numerous spanish books which are absolutely fantastic. In fact my favourite book is El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Reverte (obviously in the english translation because i dont speak spanish!).

      So your generalisation is completely inane and i shall ignore everything you say from now on because one post of yours is enough for me to generalise and say that you are a moron... Fair call?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You too?

        I generally ignore him most of the time already.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @AC : I generally ignore him most of the time already

          Every action has an equal and opposite reaction so no doubt somehwere someone is hanging on to my every word, thankyou for that thought.

          I completed my survey by asking friends and family if they'd read DQ. My wife was the only one to say she'd read part of it, when pushed she conceded it was very little before finding it too tedious, and she is a Spanish language teacher to University level. She then tried to save face by saying some people do find it humourous but couldn't actually name names.

          What you need to understand about Spanish prose is that it is extremely laborious. For example. a newspaper report about an old lady losing a purse will run to three pages detailing her whole day from the time she arose minute by miunte. It will state in which order she put on her mascara, whether she painted her upper lip first or her lower one with each action given a timestamp. It will go on through her day until she reported the loss to the police giving the exact time she entered the police station, which foot she put through the door first and just in case there is any doubt which was second. You will know everything about that woman's day with the exception of where she lost her purse.

          I imagine journalist up and down the country waiting for something exciting to report like somebody falling off a segway in the Retiro at the same time as the King performed his daily ablutions. That would be serialised and run for a week.

          Until you have actually attempted to read a book in Spanish you are not really qualified to discredit my comments nor make judgements on my personal habits. I can see that a sanitised translation could be condensed to "it's a funny western" which incidentally is what those who haven't read the book say to make it look as if they have. No doubt the recent Japanese animated version will appeal to such people.

          As for bigotry, if you think Daily Mail readers, are xenophobic you should read the comments on the AS or Marca web pages after Hamilton wins a F1 race. As an aside, the incident with the monkey suits in Barcelona is just the very tiny tip of a very large iceberg. Back on track, according to those commentors, when Massa pulled over to let Alonso through, Hamilton should have been penalised. It was also considered to be the most daringly breathtaking overtaking manouvre since Aesop's far slower hare was passed by the undoubtedly faster turtle. As for Alberto Contador, they haven't pinned that one on Hamilton but the number of excuses for his positive drugs tests is approaching astronimcal numbers and easily put the moon landing was fake theorists to shame. These are examples of a latino trait, national pride, no matter how blatant a fault is or how incredibly boring their authors are they will defend them to the end.

          You might call these comments bigotry, I call them observation, just get over it. I don't get upset when I'm told English food is crap and my friends and colleagues don't get upset when I say they can't drive. What neither of us need is some namby pamby liberal do-gooder who has no experience outside their own PC mind trying to tell us what we are.

          If you've managed to get this far then you're not ignoring me as much as you should.

          I'd also be glad if a real Spaniard could honestly rebuke any of the above.

  3. James 5

    If my maths..

    is correct: One Don Quixote = 1973 Kilobytes (approximately).

    Is this to be the new name, on El Reg, for the amount of data filtched or obtained illegally.

    Sounds good to me. (1973 was a good year)

  4. patrick_bateman

    The google world

    "Our final aim is to delete the data" after we have collated the information we need and copied to its required 3rd part company.

    At the end of the day we only know what we are told.

    ..And I cant blame google for collecting OPEN wireless info, i would, anyone with wireless activated on there phone walking around picks this info up, what we do with it is different. .

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      If I left....

      My overcoat hanging on the garden fence...

      An electric drill or hammer on the wrong side of the fence after fixing a post...

      Would you "permanently borrow them", just walk by or remind me that I have forgotten about them?

      -----------

      So what makes you think "Electronic transmissions" are any different, either you respect that the "data & information" is not yours & try to avoid listening; or you DONT!

      Google "recorded the info purely for commercial gain" knowing that there were "privacy & data protection laws" in place that they were very likely to be breaking! :(

  5. Pirate Peter
    FAIL

    and our toothless ICO does what??

    yet another example of other EU states with decent data protection departments are showing the UK how to do things, while our ICO believes all the BS he is given by big corporates and totally fails in his role to protect UK citizens privacy and data

  6. Wize

    They sound lucky

    They are only being charged with one count of each offence. They could be forced to hand over the data and charged with multiple counts of data slurping.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stated Intentions and Actions

    As far as I'm aware Google told the authorities that they were only going round taking pictures. Then somebody found out they'd been slurpin WiFi data, something they never told the authorities they were going to do. If an organisation is going to collect and store personal data then under European law they must inform the relevant authorities. So they broke the law by collectiong the data.

    When this story initially broke I seem to recall that they claimed that they had collected the data accidentally. I still laugh when I hear about that, they accidentally collected and stored six and a half thousand Don Quixote's of data.

    Then of course it turns out that all this data was being used to make their crappy geolocation service work. So they have no intention of deleting the data do they? They're keeping at least some of it for their geolocation service. Even so they just don't get European data protection law do they. The law says if you store personal data you must register witht he authorities first, it doesn't say you don't have to register if you intend to delete the data eventually. I doubt US legislation is very different so they can't really claim that they thought they were OK. Even if they did try that I think you'll find that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

    The main point is however that first they didn't say they were collecting WiFi data. Then when they were found out they claimed they had done it accidentally. Then when that didn't wash they claimed they were going to delete the data, so it didn't matter. They sound like the excuses of a nine year old who has been caught out being naughty still hoping the full extent of his crimes won't be found out. "I didn't mean to take it." followed by "I was going to put it back."

    Every country where they have slurped WiFi should prosecute to the maximum extent of the law. Unless of course they can prove they have delete every last little bit of data, right down to chucking their shitty little geolocation system in the bin.

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