Google Reaches Deal With Connecticut in Data Probe

From Amir Efrati at the Wall Street Journal,

Connecticut's attorney general said Google Inc. won't have to hand over user data it collected from unsecured wireless networks as part of his office's probe of the Internet giant's privacy snafu.

Attorney General George Jepsen said Friday his office reached a deal with the Internet company that allows him to begin settlement negotiations over whether Google violated state law. Last month Google rejected a subpoena issued by Mr. Jepsen's predecessor, Richard Blumenthal, to hand over data the company collected when its Street View cars were within range of unsecured wireless Internet hotspots.

Google's world-wide fleet of Street View cars for years collected images of streets that are used in the company's online mapping service. But they also scanned for wireless networks in order to beef up certain mobile-device applications that help pinpoint the location of users. In some cases the cars inadvertently collected personal information such as email addresses and passwords, Google said last year.

As part of the deal with Connecticut, Google said it wouldn't contest the fact that its Street View cars had collected private user information including URLs of requested Web pages, partial or complete email communications or other information in 2008 and 2009, according to Mr. Jepsen.

A Google spokeswoman reiterated the company's statements that it is "profoundly sorry" for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted wireless networks.

"As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities," she said. "We did not want and have never used the payload data in any of our products and services. We want to delete this data as soon as possible and will continue to work with the authorities to determine the best way forward, as well as to answer their further questions and concerns."

Mr. Jepsen said he is leading a 40-state coalition that is examining the issue, and that he is prepared to file a lawsuit if settlement talks break down.

The Federal Communications Commission said in November it was probing whether Google broke federal law in collecting consumer data via Wi-Fi networks. Another agency, the Federal Trade Commission, previously ended its probe and said Google had taken sufficient steps to prevent a recurrence.

When the mistakes became known earlier this year, Google initially said a review of the data it collected showed it captured fragments of data but later said it also had more-complete pieces of information about Internet users.

Google has said it doesn't believe it broke U.S. law, and the matter has been a bigger problem for the company outside the U.S., where it is facing probes in countries such as Germany, South Korea, and France. It has shown to regulators some of the data it collected.

"Deleted" Facebook photos still not deleted: a followup

Via Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica

Facebook may be making strides in some areas of privacy, but the company is still struggling when it comes to deleting user photos—or not deleting them, as the case may be.

We wrote a piece more than a year ago examining whether photos really disappear from social network servers when you delete them, and found that Facebook was one of the worst offenders when it came to leaving "deleted" photos online. We decided to revisit the issue recently when readers continued to point out that our deleted photos from that article were still online more than 16 months later. Indeed, this old photo of me remains on Facebook's content delivery network (CDN) servers, despite being deleted on May 21, 2009.

Read more here.

Google Shines Light on Government Requests

Google has launched a new service designed to inform its users about which governments request the removal of content and data about Google users. According to Google, "we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. The map shows the number of requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with certain limitations. We know these numbers are imperfect and may not provide a complete picture of these government requests. For example, a single request may ask for the removal of more than one URL or for the disclosure of information for multiple users. See the FAQ for more information."

Check out the service here.

The Case Against Transparency

Larry Lessig writes an interesting piece entitled Against Transparency The New Republic.

Many of the arguments made by Lessig echo many of our in class discussions. In particular, Lessig notes that transparency does not necessarily lead to greater understanding. Rather, in some cases increased transparency can lead to misunderstanding and misperception. In a world of excessive data flows it is easy to misinterpret data when the context required to understand the data is missing.

O'Harrow made a similar argument in No Place to Hide. When he noted that even when accurate data was released it could easily be misunderstood and abused. The story of the man who lost is job because his juvenile record of vandalism was released to his employer offers a case in point.

I recommend that you peruse this article prior to next weeks class when we our guest speaker Brian Drake will discuss how the government is using cloud computing and social media to increase transparency.