Google Street View Wi-Spy — 60s explainer (B01)

01 / 08 · Setup

GOOGLE MAPS THE STREETS.

since 2007

02 / 08 · Tension

BUT NOT JUST STREETS.

30 countries · 3 years · silent sniffing

03 / 08 · Reveal

JOHANNES CASPAR

Hamburg Data Protection Commissioner · May 2010

04 / 08 · Mechanism

car with antenna → payload data from Wi-Fi

Street View car

Wi-Fi + GPS antennas

open Wi-Fi networks

Google servers

hundreds of GB of intercepted data

passwords, emails, bank logins, file names

05 / 08 · Scale

30 COUNTRIES. 3 YEARS. POLAND INCLUDED.

2007 start 2010 disclosure 2013 US settlements

600 GB

of data

30+

countries

~10M

EUR + USD combined

06 / 08 · Discovery

MAY 2010

Bundesnetzagentur

DE audit

Johannes Caspar

Hamburg DPA

South Korea police

Nov 2011 · raid

"a single engineer"? Marius Milner, author of NetStumbler

07 / 08 · Penalties

~10 MLN

EUR + USD combined from 30 countries

$7M settlement with 38 US states · Joffe v. Google $13M · Spain €900K · Germany €145K · France €100K

08 / 08

WI-SPY

The first global Big Tech case before national regulators. Lesson: an open Wi-Fi network is NOT "publicly available."
Case B01 in Big Tech Files.