Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of NetStumbler

Re:Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of Ne... by branola on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @12:25AM (#3912974)

Depicting his actions as the work of a rogue “requires putting a lot of dots together,” Mr. Milner said enigmatically Sunday before insisting again he had no comment.

It doesn't sound particularly enigmatic to me. It seems like Milner is clearly saying that Google deliberately misrepresented his behavior as a rogue action to facilitate their legal self-protection when in fact it's obvious from their choice of the author of NetStumbler to work on Street View that his designated role was likely to involve making use of his expertise with Wi-Fi networks.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of Ne... by jack-r-abbit on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @12:53AM (#3913058)

Of course they hired a WiFi expert for their WiFi-related project. But that doesn't mean their claim of rogue behavior is simply self-protection. What if they hired him for his expertise with Wi-Fi and told him they only wanted to collect the minimal amount of data but he went rogue and collected ALL the data anyway? But I'm with those people that think the freely broadcast unencrypted packets are in the public domain and Google didn't do anything illegal.

[ Parent | on HN ]

[deleted]

Re:Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of Ne... by wmf on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @01:07AM (#3913099)

Sigh. They're not related per se, but the same cars were used to collect street view photos and SSID->location mappings (used for Android positioning).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of Ne... by RegEx on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @01:05AM (#3913095)

Not the best source, but it gives you the gist of things:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/196397/googles_wifi_spying_wh...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of Ne... by samstave on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @12:58AM (#3913069)

Exactly. Utter BS. The company that claims to be the smartest people in the world just haphazardly put this guy on this project.

Not a chance.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Data Engineer in Google Case Is Identified - author of Ne... by brudgers on Tuesday May 01, 2012 @01:06AM (#3913097)

With the resources devoted to Streetview, it is unlikely that the software running it was a 20% time project by the time it was deployed.

[ Parent | on HN ]