The biggest U.S. internet wiretapping program outside the NSA may be headed to the Supreme Court.
Google is asking the high court to rule on the legality of the company’s past sniffing of unencrypted Wi-Fi traffic in neighborhoods around the country as part of its Street View program. An appeals court last September found that the sniffing may have violated the Wiretap Act.
The company’s fleet of photo-snapping cars is equipped with Wi-Fi hardware to record the names and MAC addresses of nearby routers to improve Google geolocation services. From 2008-2010, those vehicles were also capturing tiny snippets of internet traffic from countless thousands of routers that weren’t employing encryption, turning every Street View vehicle into a rolling spy machine.
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Tuesday, April 1, 2014
