Haha. You'd think. Many people identify themselves as "Organ Donors" to represent that they've pledged to donate after death. Proper english? Nah, but it's a typical way of putting it. "Living Donation" is a common way to make the distinction. If I'd said 'kidney donor' then some folks might have been under the impression that I'd made such a pledge as opposed to having already donated.
Yeah, sorry about that. This is an early beta version, and I've only built the chrome extension for it at the moment. I'm working on firefox. If you want, I can notify you when it's available?
> If you installed the briarpatch extension, all of your bookmarks are now in sync.
If I had been using Chrome, all my bookmarks would have been uploaded automatically? Don't you think that's a bit intrusive? Trying to be constructive here, not criticizing your system at all.
You can choose which bookmarks you want to make public as soon as you install the extension. It's also kind of nice to have all of your bookmarks in briarpatch because you will always have a backup copy of them, and won't lose them if you get a new computer, etc...
That is actually likely to be a valuable bit of demographic data. It's one of the rare pieces of information that indicates altruism, along with charitable giving. Many advertisers would like to be able to target organ donors.
In Canada it also apparently used to potentially say something about your sexual orientation as well, at least if you were male - gay men were barred from donating organs a few years ago.
That is the case in many countryis with blood. The Danish blood bank ran into an issue a few years ago where they warned of a possible blood shortage a few years ago and they then turned down blood from (healthy) male gays.
You can't donate if you had sex with a single male 30 years ago, but I can sleep with all the females I want and still donate.
Those rules came in in the early 80s when we barely had a clue about HIV/AIDS and one of the few things that were clear was that gay men were a higher risk group (though we didn't know why).
Given there are no doubt reliable tests to find and discard blood carrying such things, I'd be interested to know why the rules have not been removed and such tests put in place (it could be that governments don't want a public argument with certain narrow minded loud voiced religious groups, or it could be that the tests are just too time consuming or otherwise expensive).
Religious groups don't have much power here and the rules still exist.
But blood donation rules are fucked. I am banned for life from donating blood in the US -- because I spend more the 3 (or is it 5) years in Europe (I was born here). Apparently every european is considered so likely to have mad cow disease that you are better of not getting our blood at all.
> It's more like hearing a loud mouthed neighbor say to his wife "It's a secret! don't tell any one.. its very private too... we have won the jackpot"
Yeah, if it was only near your home. But if you went around driving and listening to hundreds of "loud neighbors" for a day that'd change from passive listening to being outright creepy.
Yeah and if you were driving around taking pictures of peoples homes some might call that creepy---but that's exactly what Google did to create Street View.
I don't think it benefits anyone to argue against the analogy, rather than arguing against the reality in this case.
And still not unethical. Why is "near my home" any different from "not near my home"? Or is it the volume/number of loudmouthed neighbors you listened to, from the public street, what you object to?
Exactly. We don't go into people's homes not because they have a fence and a shotgun but because we were not invited, that is the whole point.
Most of the arguments here circle around "ah you were a fool to let your data out, so Google was wise and snooped it". WTF kind argument is that? Since when is it ok for a corporation to hire "experts" who go around collecting private data? What is this data for? Why, in the first place, do they have a wifi expert driving around doing that?
I think you are not aware of the context here. The reason they have a wifi expert roaming around is because they are marking free wifi spots as part of streetview.
To mark hotspots you don't need packet sniffing or data capture of any kind. Why is Google capturing packet payload during "wardriving"? Nobody does that. All you do is store the GPS location, plus basic AP identification, period.
> By your logic then if someone gets robbed on the streets, then it's their fault for "walking around freely"?
Well, to more strictly match the analogy--if someone is walking around with a purse that is constantly leaking coins, and they get "robbed" (by someone finding some of said coins and wandering off with them), then I would say that that is their own fault, yes.
So by your logic simply owning a Wi-Fi access-point at home and not adding strong cryptography is reason enough for a corporation to drive their car to your house and capture your data?
So to keep Google away from logging my network data I need a strong virtual fence now, otherwise they'll come spying on my traffic?
That is 100% wrong. Google shouldn't be snooping on my data at all, not even if my AP was within their corporate headquarters reach. That is simply not acceptable behavior from a major corporation.
No, just like photography being allowed in public does not mean that a video camera is going to be pointed at your house 24 hours a day and you'll be mandated to like it.
On the other hand, the existence of the paparazzi is not enough to justify banning the freedom to take pictures in public places.
All of these laws have to be carefully balanced to make sure we retain our rights.
The paparazzi make a living from those photos, so there is a reason for them to be out there doing that(not saying I agree, just saying there's a reason for it).
What is Google doing driving around collecting personal data for? Google is a search engine with several great products around it. WTF are they driving around collecting data for? See? It doesn't make any sense, this is plain creepy.
...because Google Maps has backup-geolocation through a database of wi-fi access point ID/GPS-pair mappings, which can only be discovered by exactly this wardriving process? It's kind of the central point of the story, here.
I'm surprised that you think the smelling analogy is valid. There is nothing really at stake with letting the aroma from my kitchen waft onto the street aside from maybe what's in the meal I've prepared.
Personal information is a different matter. It's perfectly reasonable to take issue with Google for taking people's data without their knowledge about it.
Personal information becomes public when it's not properly secured and then broadcasted out into the world... even if the user doesn't understand it's happening.
I agree that it's not a perfect analogy, but it is quite a bit closer than being robbed, as the the OP suggested.
>By your logic then if someone gets robbed on the streets, then it's their fault for "walking around freely"
Your analogy is broken, and I think you know it.
The bigger question is, "is it OK for someone to methodically collect data that people (inadvertently) broadcast about themselves?". The advertising industry has been doing it for years, and it's really a legal and ethical fuzzy area. The more productive conversation will revolve around privacy rights and expectations.
> By your logic then if someone gets robbed on the streets, then it's their fault for "walking around freely"?
Come on that a bit excessive...
No one is hurt if packets are captured. Its not a violent act. Surely we can loose the hyperbolae.
I am saying that its not realistic to expect privacy if you do things in a public space, including broadcasting your data. If you choose to tell a story out on the street and I hear it you don't get to then say I am invading your privacy by hearing it.
> You don't see what the deal is with a major corporation doing wardriving and packet capturing?
I don't, actually. There was no "hacking" or exploitation of any kind - any idiot with a wifi card can do the same thing.
>By your logic then if someone gets robbed on the streets, then it's their fault for "walking around freely"?
If I stand on the corner shouting out my social security and bank account numbers, I expect somebody will rip me off. Changing the type of wave from a sound wave to a radio wave doesn't really change anything.
> I don't, actually. There was no "hacking" or exploitation of any kind - any idiot with a wifi card can do the same thing.
What the hell? So if Pizza Hut were to start capturing radio waves you'd find that normal?
Why is it normal for Google to go around capturing customer data? That is my question. Even if my data is open to the public, absolutely not encrypted, why is it normal for a major corporation to go around capturing it. THAT is the question, not whether I had encryption or not!
IMO no corporation should be going around recording my data even if it was broadcast in plain sight.
It seems like you're missing the point. The only reason we're hearing about this is because Google is a huge, popular company and somebody leaked it. I could be listening to your wifi right now, and you wouldn't even know. There's no way you can know. Making it illegal isn't going to protect you.
The only way to protect your information is to not broadcast in the open.
The public doesn't have the right to know, since no law was broken. The engineer was identified by a "former state investigator [who] spoke on the condition that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak."
Yes we do, it's in the second paragraph of the article.
"The F.C.C. recently closed its 17-month inquiry into the project, Street View, with a finding that Google broke no laws but had obstructed its investigation."
Even if we didn't, that's also a reason for not disclosing this person's identity: innocent until proven guilty.
Well, usually, the individual who comes into possession of the information decides whether it should be public, using their own sense of ethics. And questions like "how does this benefit the public good?" are precisely the kind of thing used as input to that ethical calculation.
