Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal plans to head up a 30-state investigation into Google’s Wi-Fi data gathering scandal, CNET reports. Blumenthal’s investigation adds to the legal headaches for Google caused by the revelation that its Street View camera cars were collecting wireless “payload” data in addition to geolocation data from unsecured wireless hot spots. Ever since Google revealed the extent of its data gathering a month ago in response to inquiries from German regulators, lawyers and politicians have been lining up to express their outrage. “Consumers have a right and a need to know what personal information—which could include eMails, web browsing, and passwords—Google may have collected, how, and why,” Blumenthal said in an online statement. “Google must come clean, explaining how and why it intercepted and saved private information broadcast over personal and business wireless networks.” Google has argued that the data it collected were “fragmented,” because Street View cars were moving and the equipment used to record data was changing wireless channels several times a second. The company also has said that it collected the data inadvertently, and the company’s intent will be a key part of the legal battle between Google and its critics…
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Going rogue: IT officials fight student-run web networks
Campus technology officials say there’s only one surefire way to stop students from creating their own wireless internet connections in dormitories and creating a security risk for computer users: provide reliable wireless access across campus.
Unauthorized, or “rogue,” wireless networks cropped up on college campuses of every size in the mid-2000s, IT chiefs say, as students became impatient with little or no wireless connection in their dorms.
Many campuses only had wireless connections in libraries, leaving students to plug into the internet when studying in dormitories.…Read More