Presentation: Creating a Culture of Information Security – JurInnov Ltd.
November 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Google Woes Spread as Oregon Court Demands Wi-Fi Data – BusinessWeek
May 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Google Inc. has been ordered to turn over to an Oregon district court by next week data it collected with people’s e-mails, files and digital phone records, according to court documents.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers today also requested that Google preserve any information related to its data gathering.
Google sends out cars to photograph streets and houses that people can see with the Street View feature in Google Maps. The vehicles also scanned for Wi-Fi networks used for Internet access and collected private data from the wireless networks of some homes, according to a complaint filed by two people who may have been affected. Google said in a blog earlier this month it mistakenly collected the Wi-Fi data.
Oregon District Court Judge Michael Mosman issued a restraining order this week to stop Google from destroying the data it gathered and to turn over copies of the information, after Google deleted similar data from other countries. Vicki Van Valin and Neil Mertz, who sued Google for invasion of privacy, said that destroying the data would hurt their ability to prove Google’s wrongdoing and assess damages, according to a complaint filed on May 17.
Google, based in Mountain View, California, argued in a filing the district court’s order is unnecessary since it had taken steps to secure the data.
via Google Woes Spread as Oregon Court Demands Wi-Fi Data (Update2) – BusinessWeek.
Italy investigates Google’s Street View | Reuters
May 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment
- Image via Wikipedia
Italy has started an investigation into Google Inc’s Street View web service, a local watchdog said on Wednesday following the U.S. group’s announcement it had accidentally collected personal data over wireless networks.
Google said last week its fleets of cars which have been photographing streets around the world had for several years accidentally collected personal information — which a security expert said could include e-mail messages and passwords.
Italy’s privacy regulator said it would verify whether Google treated correctly the data acquired by Street View, which allows users to navigate around a 360-degree view of city streets using pictures taken by Google’s camera vehicles.
The regulator said Google Italy had admitted it collected pictures but also “data regarding the presence of wireless networks … as well as electronic communications, eventually transmitted by users via unprotected wireless networks.”
via Italy investigates Google’s Street View | Reuters.
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Google Urged to Bring Street View in Line With EU Privacy Rules – BusinessWeek
May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Google Inc.’s Street View mapping service may break EU laws unless it improves the blurring technique it uses to disguise images.
Officials from 30 European countries today supported a measure that would force Google, the owner of the most popular Internet search engine, to take further steps to avoid infringing privacy rights. The proposal would create a coordinated approach to privacy issues arising as Street View is rolled out in Europe, Gerard Lommel, one of the officials, said in an interview today.
“There needs to be a right to object for people, even when the images have not yet been put online,” Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, said in Brussels. The group isn’t satisfied with what Google has said about the amount of time it needs to store the images for the mapping service.
Google, which has almost 79 percent of the European search- engine market, according to ComScore Inc., faces growing scrutiny from regulators and competitors in Europe. In response to concerns raised by data-protection commissioners from 10 countries last month, Google last week said it’s committed to protecting user’s privacy.
via Google Urged to Bring Street View in Line With EU Privacy Rules – BusinessWeek.
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Google Opens Up on What Its ‘Street View’ Cars Collect – Digits – WSJ
April 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
By now, Google’s cars have driven down roads around the world — and in some places, they’re sparking concerns about just what information they are collecting.
So the Internet-search giant is opening up a bit about the data it compiles. Google is trying to address criticisms that have been leveled against it in European countries in particular and provided details about Street View cars in a post on its European Public Policy Blog on Tuesday. The company said it had discussed the information before but that it wanted to make it more easily accessible.
Privacy officials from 10 countries, including seven in Europe, sent Google a letter earlier this month outlining several concerns. The letter said Google’s Street View service was “launched in some countries without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms” and said “there is continued concern about the adequacy of the information you provide before the images are captured.”
So what does Google get with those cars? As anyone who has used Google Street View knows, cameras on the cars collect photos that are used in Google’s maps, and people who are out and about when the car passes can appear in images. Google reduced the amount of time it retains unblurred images in Europe, bowing to pressure from European privacy authorities. But the company has been urged to cut the time further. Google also allows people to request that images of them be removed, and a Google Germany spokeswoman told Bloomberg in March that the company would announce when it was driving by to take photos in that country.
In addition to photos, the cars gather information about Wi-Fi networks they encounter. This feature isn’t as well known, and it sparked a new round of criticism in Germany last week, with Germany’s federal commissioner for data protection saying he was “horrified” by the discovery. That’s why Google’s recent blog post devotes a considerable amount of time to explaining what Google is doing with Wi-Fi data.
Wi-Fi networks broadcast information such as the name of the network and a number given to the Wi-Fi device. In its post, Google explains that it collects this data to improve location-based services where GPS is slow or unavailable or for devices that aren’t GPS-enabled. Those devices can still triangulate location using transmissions from things like Wi-Fi networks and cellphone towers that Google has identified.
via Google Opens Up on What Its ‘Street View’ Cars Collect – Digits – WSJ.
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Business in China: What Does ‘Playing by the Rules’ Mean? – China Real Time Report – WSJ
December 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Can foreigners do business in China without violating the law? A recent article in the New Yorker on foreigners doing business in China quotes one English victim of fraud that undid the joint venture for which he worked as saying that “if you played by the rules, you were finished.” (Tim Clissold, author of Mr. China, cited by Evan Osnos, “Letter from China” The New Yorker,” Nov. 23, 2009.) The article also cites a very different view, that of Don St. Pierre, Jr., who with his father, a veteran of business in China, operates a successful wine importing business: “…If you are engaged in business you are subject to the same rules as everybody else.”
The first point of view seems obvious enough if Clissold meant simply adhering to laws as they are written, rather than in practice. Or is it? If it means you have to violate Chinese laws and regulations in order to succeed, you are obviously asking for trouble, and that seems like a dangerous course of action. But what does the alternative view mean when it refers to the conduct of “everybody else” in an economy and society in which the rules are often hard to find, opaque when you find them, and subject to varying interpretations or neglect in different parts of China according to the extraordinarily wide discretion of bureaucrats?
Suppose, for example, that the general manager of the joint venture in which you have invested is asked to find a job at the venture for the son of a provincial official who has some regulatory powers over it. Or suppose your Chinese partner suggests that a group of engineers ought to be sent to the U.S for training, but proposes an itinerary that indicates the group will spend more time in Las Vegas than anywhere else? Chinese laws and regulations, as well as Communist Party rules, prohibit officials from using their positions to extract benefits, including, for example, tourism. The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits giving “anything of value” to a “foreign official” with the “corrupt purpose” of obtaining business. It also permits, however, “reasonable and bona fide expenditures, such as travel and lodging expenses…of a foreign official…directly related” to promotion of products or “the execution or performance of a contract.”
[continued] Stanley Lubman: Business in China: What Does ‘Playing by the Rules’ Mean? – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
