Of Google and editorializing

Nashville residents take on Google Wi-Spy, join privacy lawsuit

As a journalist (or at least someone with a journalism degree), I'm more bothered by the editorializing in this story than I am by the content, specifically, the author's line "Google may have downloaded information such as user names and passwords if you were on the Internet when the street view car drove by." Without the bolded words, this is a factual statement; adding the bolded words is editorializing. Your readers can figure out what kind of things can be gathered from an open Internet connection.

He's also incorrect in the next paragraph, "Google says it tapped into wireless networks in an effort — unrelated to the street view feature — to improve its location-based services, such as those that allow smartphone users to map their location." The street view feature is part of the maps and location-based services. It's completely related.

There are other turns of phrase -- such as the wry "Google, however, wants a second opinion" -- that seem to betray a slight bias by the reporter.

Now, I'm a Google geek, so I'm not going to be too concerned about this. Frankly, this is no different than having a private conversation over a CB radio. If you want a secure conversation, you use secure channels, so to speak; if you want secure data, you don't make it public, you put some kind of security on it. And to be clear, Google wasn't "cracking" these open networks; the term "open" is used for a reason. And I may be naive, but I'm not buying that Google was gathering passwords -- umm, if Google wants to misuse personal information, it has much easier ways of getting it (hint: it's already got it...). It was trying to use open wireless connections to base locations on; this is another way of geo-locating, using public wi-fi hotspots. When you don't password-protect your connection, yours looks no different to a scanning computer than does the one at Starbucks. The lesson you should learn from this isn't that you should sue Google, it's that you should protect your network from people who are certainly up to no good.

Google has also elicited screams with its Street View technology by taking pictures of people's houses and posting them on the Internet. This is again a matter of public information; if your house is on a public road, then anyone can see it. Google just has a much bigger audience for its photos.

This will be an interesting test case, one of many that are defining the laws of our new digital age. But even more important than defining the laws may be the defining our attitudes toward all the capabilities of the digital age.