MPs - Please get rid of this toothless Information Commissioner and
get somebody with some real teeth and not afraid to use them.
The ICO's handeling of any information brach investigation is shamefull.
The Information Commissioner faces sharp criticism in Parliament over his handling of an investigation into Google's Street View Wi-Fi data harvesting operation. Tory MP Robert Halfon admonished Christopher Graham ahead of a backbench debate on Google and internet privacy today. "The UK Information Commissioner has been lily- …
You don't go around leaving your premises unlocked, as was the case in yesteryear, only to complain that someone walked in and taken something.
For years the WiFi manufacturers have been advising people to implement security, not helped by making the default as security turned off, so Halton and his merry bunch of dummies should stop blaming Google, who was honest enough not to delete the evidence.
As someone who travels constantly, I NEVER have to pay for WiFi access, I even download gigabyte Bit-torrents over WiFi and rarely get interrupted. As might be expected, this is being posted over a neighbours unit and he uses WEP! (I subscribe to WeFi.com so if you need some handy passwords ...)
... but not padlocked, like your WEP "protected" neighbour, should you be surprised that your network is being intruded on? Or is "you didn't do enough to protect it" a valid excuse?
Are you saying you regularly break into others' wireless networks and steal their broadband?
forgetting to lock my front door, or using a flimsy lock, is not actually an invite to all and sundry to walk into my home, and start taking/using things. If you are, as you claim, actually cracking people's encryption and continually using other's broadband, potentially costing them significant amounts of money*, you should also be prosecuted for the criminal you are!
It doesn't matter if you encrypt a communication or not, intercepting it is still a crime, and should be punished as such.
*what if you're bitorrenting a multi-gigabyte file through a 3g wi-fi point on their phone?
Any radio transmission is sent at risk of being intercepted, whether or not it has some control features embedded in the signal.
I guess if you are in the EU listening to radio transmissions, made in a common or open frequency band, it might be an offence but there are many countries where it isn't. I know a McBarf burger store where there is a password required but they don't care who uses it. Same with coffee shops. etc.
Here in Cambodia we access satellite radio and TV as well as WiFi quite legally without having to pay for services.- the laws attitude is these controls are for transmission systems revenue purposes and if they don't work, try again.
The only difference between here and next door, either north or east, Laos or Vietnam, is that you have to get a government licence for operating a satellite dish.
BTW, we have unlimited downloads in all three countries so no one is losing money.
You are assuming that all countries have similar legislation to yours. They don't, therefore your views have limited geographical applicability. Besides, reporting my IP would have little consequence - it's 112.197.220.077 BTW - as VN laws aren't being broken. Neither am I a criminal. Furthermore, I and most others use VPN so IP's become even less relevant.
Most of our restaurant WiFi's are supplied by FPT (User: fpt; p/w: telecom) which are openly displayed when you access a WiFi (just hit enter) and the attitude here is that open WiFi is good for business. Only Western owned hotels think about charging for WiFi.
Same in regional airports, and even on the rail and some buses. Free and unlimited. And passworded.
So please don't get would up, privacy is being breached but I could careless about others traffic. My point still remains, if you have an expectation of privacy use WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK, otherwise don't complain. Besides, what with all the smartphones sniffing your connections, things are really busy out there. And you don't even realise it.
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@"Google's invasion of privacy is starting to look like a pattern."
Starting to look like a pattern?! ... where the fuck have they been for the past decade!
The ICO are utterly useless. They don't know fuck all about technology. They don't know what is happening in technology, they don't know what capabilities have already been implemented, let alone what capabilities are in research and development. They know fuck all about what they should know about and so they are utterly, totally and completely an absolute waste of time, money and space!
If an asteroid hit their building today no one would fucking notice. They serve no purpose. They are useless. This is shown by their utter lack of action against Phorm, the government, Google, and dozens of other companies all seeking to add spying capabilities for any number of reasons, not least of which endless advertising and the construction of a police state!
Starting to look like a fucking pattern?!
Its no wonder England is the fastest growing Police State in the world with these useless zombies as our line of defence against what is happening!
Hey ICO we need to fire the whole fucking lot of you!. This situation is increasingly intolerable and increasingly infuriating. Hey ICO this is your last chance, wake up this year or else its too late and if you lot continue to fail to protect us then you are leaving it to us to finally take action against the MPs and government departments guilty of endless pushes towards creating a Police State and I for one have utterly had enough and seen enough. You bastards are not turning my country into a police state and wiping out centuries of freedoms that people fought for, for generations to stop state interference in their lives. No more. I've had enough and seen enough and now I'm angry like never before and as time goes on more and more people are thinking like me. Government time up, enough is enough!
While you are all screaming and shouting (*1) about something passive that might have happened (*2) for a few seconds once or twice in the last few years. The government (*3) is going to actively record -everything- you do, for a year.
Is Mr Halfron, a member of that government, looking like your friend now?
(*1) and insulting the ICO, which will -really- make them sympathetic huh?
(*2) if you are on the street view routes, and if you did not employ available encryption.
(*3) via coercion of your ISP, and the considerable costs of this will be passed on to you.
Sorry, but its sad that it isn't until there is enough public outrage and in this case globally, that the governments may actually consider doing anything.
With respect to this incident, my bet is that the stuffed shirts will rant and rave, yet do nothing to curtail Google. I would doubt that they would even get fined.
Maybe the turn around is due to Schmidt's ass-in-nine (emphatic asinine) rants about getting a new identity after your friends post pictures of you doing something stupid on the web.
Or that Google's retention policies are also questionable?
The ICO needs breaking up and pushing down the river like a rusted, half sunk ship that she is!
The amount of hassle they have caused with at work with their general lack of information, you ring up for advise on DPA and you get two different answers from different operators.
I got dragged through a disciplinary at work as when my directors doubled checked info i had been giving by the ICO, the law had apparently changed over night, and black became white!
Corpexecs determine incoming investment. When they tell governments to jump governments either ask 'how high?' or incoming investments and jobs go elsewhere. This means that laws which apply to the rest of us, e.g. the Computer Misuse Act or the Data Protection Act are not applied in practice to corpexecs. Good examples of this rule include the Sony Rootkit which clearly ignored the CMA section 1, by compromising many of our computers without our authorisation. But no Sony execs did jail time for this because Sony decide incoming investment and how many jobs UK serfs get awarded.