It looks like Google is “almost certain” to face prosecution after they collected data from unsecured wi-fi networks whilst going about their StreetView project, according to Privacy International (PI).

Google has released an independent audit of the rogue ’sniffing’ code, which it has claimed was mistakenly included in the StreetView software. However, PI is still convinced that this audit proves “criminal intent”.

“The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation,” said PI in a statement.

“The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute,” said Simon Davies, head of PI to the BBC. “I don’t see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard.”

Google are blaming this error on an unnamed engineer and stated: “As we have said before, this was a mistake. The report today confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted wi-fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns.”

PI are not having that though: “The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn’t add up. This is complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked,” said Mr Davies. “It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management and of duty of care.”

A federal judge, who was probably wondering why they bothered getting out of bed that morning, dismissed a lawsuit against Apple that accused company employees of waiting like “vultures” to spy on some woman every time she used an Apple laptop to go online.

The clearly mental Leslie Carr wanted $60 million for the trauma, which she said kept her from publishing on the web.

She alleged, among other things, that each time she used the laptop to go online, “there would be a mass number of Apple employees waiting greedily like vultures to survey and monitor my life.”

But US District Judge Richard Berman said the complaint “fails to state a plausible claim for relief. Where, as here, a complaint is asserting unrealistic and unsupportable claims, a court may dismiss it.”

Conspiracy theorists, the comments are all yours.

[PCPro]

The people behind Facebook have had enough applications that allow users to see who has been viewing their profile. They’re so irritated by it that they’re not just getting rid of them, but they’re “aggressively disabling” them.

Is it me, or does threatening to ‘aggressively disabling’ sound a bit dodgy? Just me? Several variants of these “stalker apps” have appeared on Facebook in recent days seeing unwitting/witless users helping to spread rogue software by attempting to install it.

Among the applications that have now been given the heave-ho are “Stalker Check”, and “Who has visited my profile”. Quite why you’d want to see who has been visiting your profile is a bit of a mystery… but then again, why anyone would want to constantly bombard everyone else with stuff about shitty virtual farms and pretend Mafia turf wars is another complete baffler (and source of immense irritation).

In a statement, Facebook said: “Don’t believe any applications that claim they can show you who’s viewing your profile or photo. They can’t.”

Naturally, these apps have been created to make money for the designers by forcing would-be users to view advertising. That said, there’s the chance that those who sign up could be redirected to sites containing viruses and malicious software.

Maybe Facebook should look into a system similar to Apple’s App Store where everything that goes through the site should be vetted first. However, that seems unlikely.

Speaking to the BBC last March, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg said: “There will occasionally be some applications that people don’t like. Our philosophy is that having an open system anyone can participate in is generally better.”

[Newsbeat]

95% of Britain is now on Google’s Street View. Y’know? That’s the thing where you can zoom right in on your house and coo “Oooh! I left the window open when they passed little important me!”

Google Maps is, of course, a very useful tool (to be perfectly honest, I don’t know how I managed to find anywhere at all without it) yet, there are privacy issues. Some rags have talked about how it could be rather useful to burglars… but in fairness, the fact that you’re at work most of the time, they could probably walk around your property and scope it out in a much more effective way.

Yeah. Someone’s probably doing that right now whilst you scratch your arse with a biro at work.

So, now that Britain is pretty much covered completely, have a rummage around and see if you can catch any blokes sneaking out of lapdancing clubs, nudey sunbathers or someone cottaging in a park. Get cracking too because Google announced that it might have to cancel the Google Street View service in the EU due to unmanageable requests of the European Commission.

The Register have a got some mash-up map thing that shows where the GoogleMobiles have been which you can see here.

The question mark in the headline not only asks a genuine question but, with any luck, acts as a safeguard against any potential lawsuits because, as I sit here in my undercrackers eating Angel Delight dry from the sachet and borrowing an article from another website, I’ve got no idea.

Pointless disclaimer out of the way, consumer watchdog Which? is all pleased at the news that the solicitors’ watchdog – Solicitors Regulation Authority – will pursue its complaint about a London law firm, Davenport Lyons, which accused hundreds of people of illegal file sharing despite the fact they’d done nothing wrong.

The SRA have agreed with the Which? accusation that Davenport Lyons of being ‘bullying’ and ‘excessive’ and that there are grounds to call them to account.

It’s going to a disciplinary tribunal.

Deborah Prince, Head of Legal Affairs, Which?, said: “We’re pleased to see some action at last from the SRA and hope the tide is finally turning in favour of consumers. We now want to see some decisive action to stop these bully-boy tactics. We hope the SRA’s decision sends a message to law firms like ACS and TBI that they can’t make a quick buck by accusing people of copyright infringements they haven’t committed.”

Apparently, Which? continually hears from people angered by letters they’ve received that wrongly accuse them of illegal file sharing and demanding payment for their ‘crime’. It has produced advice for such people on its website, which you can find here.

Have any of you lot had any bother with letters such as this? Feel free to rant in the comments.

[DOF]

While we consider the majority of our readership to be a pack of bastards, we have a special place in our heart for you. You are an avid Bitterwallet reader, and we hold you in high regards because of your sharp mind, your keen sense of curiosity and your willingness to entertain whatever drivel we push your way.

Andy of Yarm is one better than an avid reader of Bitterwallet – he’s a rabid reader, one of the old guard who has consumed our organ from the beginning. And unknown to us, Andy has been conducting a lurid scientific experiment concerning personal privacy and spam email:

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been dropping in smartarse comments on the BW website, mainly along the lines ‘never post your email details on the web’ following by my email address andyofyarm@gmail.com.

A quick check to Google under the keyword ‘andyofyarm’ shows a healthy page of links generated, mostly Bitterwallet but also bizarrely this page.

Given that avid BW readers are a pack of twats I expected my inbox to be deluged with Viagra spam or various threats etc. So tonight, with trepidation, I opened the Gmail inbox. Prepare to be shocked by the wall of filth and abuse:

No detail from Andy on whether the Spam box was full, but interesting that his details were yet to be scraped and abused. That said, it’s fair to say that after this post he can probably expect email from Donkey Capers and Wet Girls in the Raw.

Today marks the third annual international Data Privacy Day.

That’s astonishingly boring isn’t it? How do you celebrate it? Is it a dress down day? Would you even find out because the data required to tell you about it was kept private?

Anyway, this thing is an awareness raising initiative. Seeing as it’s focused on data privacy and protection, new statistics from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) show that the rate of data security breaches isn’t slowing at all.

Great.

The ICO have revealed in a statement that it has uncovered over 800 data security breaches since 2007, nearly 200 of which were the result of mistakes and 262 due to criminal theft.

The data watchdog has recently been awarded new powers… not the power of flight or anything interesting like that… rather, they are allowed to fine organisations up to £500,000 if they cock up.

The power has clearly gone to their heads as they’re warning that they’ll use these tougher sanctions if companies fail to report security breaches which subsequently come to light.

“In just over two months a further 100 organisations have reported data security breaches to us,” said deputy Information Commissioner David Smith.

“We are keen to work with organisations to prevent breaches occurring in the first place, and to help put things right when things do go wrong. Talking to us may, of course, result in regulatory action. However, organisations must act responsibly.”

He didn’t add: “We’ll come and fuck you a new arsehole. We can do it. We’re allowed. We’re hung like hoover bags as well.”

This Data Privacy Day is even more joyous than usual because it’s also the fourth annual European Data Protection Day. If I’d know in advance, I would have taken the day off work and got pissed.

European data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx, who is a monumentally exciting man, argues that: “The growing use of personal data affects us all, and the privacy consequences of this development are now becoming more visible. It is therefore essential that everyone’s fundamental rights to privacy and data protection are effectively protected in practice.”

PARTY!

[V3]

Ever taken a photograph of something and got the long arm of the law getting involved? If you were taking pictures of a top secret government bunker, then you’ve little cause to complain… but if you were snapping something innocent, then the police should not be getting involved, right?

Well, hundreds of amateur and professional photographers are expected to gather in Trafalgar Square tomorrow to defend their right to take pictures in public places.

Starting at noon, this flash mob (geddit? Camera flash? Oh piss off, you’re impossible you lot) will get together en masse after the gathering was organised by ‘I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist‘, a group set up by professional photographers last year.

The event comes on the back of a series of ‘high-profile detentions’ under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. Amongst these detentions was architectural photographer Grant Smith who sparked a security alert in London while taking a pictures of a church. Around the same time, BBC photographer Jeff Overs told the Andrew Marr Show that he was stopped and questioned by the police after he took a picture of St Paul’s Cathedral.

That’s nothing compared to Roy Jhuboo who was out taking some pictures and suddenly found himself surrounded by policemen who had all arrived in two police vans. The police told Roy that he could have been on a ‘reconnaissance mission’ to launch a ‘rocket’ on nearby Canary Wharf.

If it wasn’t true, it would almost be comical.

Section 44 law allows police officers to stop and search people without grounds for suspicion, despite the fact that the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that police use of this Stop and Search is unlawful. Naturally, the Home Office plans to appeal the decision. Idiots.

Ahead of tomorrow’s event, its organisers released a statement which reads: ‘Our society’s visual history is under threat of extinction by anti-terrorism legislation. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act has, in effect, ended the confidence of the citizen to engage in the act of photography in a public place as photographers, artists and illustrators – amateur and professional – are harassed by police invoking terrorism legislation to stop and search them.

‘The act of documenting our street scenes and public life, our built environment, whether iconic or not, is now considered to be an act of hostile reconnaissance and could result in the detention of the image maker.’

So yeah, if you’re in London tomorrow, get to Trafalgar Square around ten past noon and you might be able to see some photographers getting clobbered with rubber batons.

[AmateurPhotographer]

Facebook eh? Buncha bastards. Founder of the vanity-site Mark Zuckerberg thinks you don’t want your privacy… and then there was some unsurprising news about our accounts… and now what?

Well, apparently, Facebook 3.1 (for iPhone and iPod touch) has a problem that’s causing a few red cheeks thanks to the new contact picture syncing functionality.

Some guy over at TheiPhoneBlog said:

“Beware of your profile pics, or your boss might get one of you doing something you don’t want them to see! What happens is, [Facebook 3.1] takes [all] the emails and phone numbers on your iPhone and sends them to Facebook. It then cross-checks and syncs them back to your iPhone. That’s a major security flaw right there! It should only sync the ones you’re friends with.

So for an example I have my coworker’s email and cell but I am not her Facebook friend. All of a sudden when I got a call from my coworker I saw a picture of her in a bikini because that was her profile pic!

I’m using Outlook 2010 and it has a new feature called Suggested Contacts where it keeps all your emails you been using. Those sync to my iPhone via exchange 2007. So now I have Facebook profile pics in Outlook 2010 for a bunch of folks that I don’t even really know just because I have emailed them.“

Thanks to the number of ridiculous (and sometimes really dodgy) photos people have as their profile pic, there’s quite a big chance of embarrassment. Of course, you’ll be alright if you’re down the pub with your mates and something weird flashes up on your screen… but not so cool if you’ve got a snide boss who spots something that makes them think you’re a lesser human than they’d even anticipated.

So what’s the technological advice to spare your blushes? Keep your phone in your pocket… and make sure it’s not filling up with filth while it’s in there.

[iPhoneBlog]

Over at Gizmodo, they’ve opened a can of worms. A can of worms that had a skeleton key inside.

So horrifying is the news that this writer has been forced into using rubbish analogies and hyperbole.

Basically, they’ve conducted an interview with an anonymous Facebook employee who has lifted the lid on how Facebook works.

The piece of gossip that will no doubt grab the most attention is that of a universal password that allows access to any account.

It’s worth pointing out that this password only worked when used from computers in the Facebook offices, but that won’t appease those who cherish their privacy. Those folks might be concerned at the news that Facebook employees still have access to all your info, including the profiles you look at and any information you have deleted.

That means any incriminating pictures of you getting mucky with a tin of chicken or that massive note you wrote in praise of Hitler’s watercolours/killing of millions of people. Facebook can still get at them and, if they wanted to, pass that information around and confirm that you are, as suspected, a dick.

Of course, you could argue that it’s hardly surprising that this is the case, given the fact that such a password makes it easier for the staff to troubleshoot and provide technical support on all of the account names.

Is this just common practice or is it a terrible invasion of your privacy? According to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, you don’t even want your privacy anymore. What do you think?

“When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.” -David Brin

People bang on about privacy all the time. Celebrities and politicians demand it and we scratch away at the resistance until we get the goods. Of course, our own personal privacy is something altogether different because we don’t go out of our way to court the spotlight like they do.

Unless of course, you include our online presence.

It’s this line of thinking – that essentially, anyone with an hefty(ish) online presence is asking for attention and thereby not fussed about privacy – that has prompted Facebook found Mark Zuckerberg claiming that people no longer have an expectation of privacy.

In The Guardian, they’ve reported that Zuckerberg’s talk at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, say the slip of a lad saying that privacy was no longer a “social norm”.

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” he said. “That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”

Zuckerberg said that the rise of social media reflected changing attitudes among ordinary people, adding that this radical change has happened in just a few years.

“When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was, ‘why would I want to put any information on the internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’. Then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information.”

It’s hardly surprising that he should say that, given that Facebook recently changed the privacy settings of the 350 million users who use the site.

Of course, access to our info is how Facebook makes coins. Through Beacon, your activities are tracked online which targets ads at you personally. This controversial method of vending lead to a lawsuit for $9.5m.

All this, according to Zuckerberg, is how Facebook stays relevant: “A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they’ve built. Doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.”

So yeah… you don’t care about your privacy. Not a jot. Right? Speak to us in the comments about how right or wrong this all is.

Some people hate social networking sites. Facebook, in particular, has come under a huge amount of scrutiny with privacy issues and the like. In the past, people who feel that the web should be open and free to see have needled Facebook for being a walled garden, and as such ‘anti-internet’.

Well, that could all be changing with a change in the privacy policy of the site.

These changes were introduced yesterday via a pop-up that asked users to update privacy settings. Like all idiots, I just clicked away from mine and ignored it. These changes enable the things on your profile to be search for via search engines and the like.

This means, if you’ve been slagging your boss off, safe in the knowledge that he won’t see because he doesn’t have a Facebook account, you might be getting a P45 this week.

Of course, Facebook have refuted the claim that these changes have been brought about to stiff users and that they are not out to trick members into revealing too much.

Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, said: “Any suggestion that we’re trying to trick them into something would work against any goal that we have.” Facebook would encourage people to be more open with their updates because, he said, that was in line with “the way the world is moving”.

Critics have claimed that this new mandate will push users into publicly sharing more information than before, as well as reducing the amount of control they have over their personal data. The changes have made Facebook users’ gender and location viewable by everyone. The default setting on the site now makes everything visible. This move is to, presumably, make the site more compatible with Google and Bing, and thereby, generate revenue for Facebook.

What do you think about it? Is this an invasion of your online presence? Do you not care because, by nature of what Facebook is, you overshare your personal details anyway?

[BBC]

Only the other day, I was walking along the street, minding my own business and sidestepping the dogs with knives, AIDS riddled litter and people puking up their twelve year old livers from alcopops, and I was arrested. The police pinned me down and said that I’d been writing a load of shit articles and swabbed my gob for a DNA sample.

That, or it was a bloke in a fancy dress outfit with a thing for jamming cotton buds into the mouths of strangers.

Anyway, with creepily fortuitous timing, the Telegraph have reported that police officers will arrest us proles for pretty much anything so they can take samples of our DNA.

The Human Genetics Commission (HGC) warned that this practice, which was revealed by a retired senior police officer, was creating a “spiral of suspicion” over the DNA database. As such, they want a review of the system, which they think is unfair and, probably more worryingly, doesn’t work.

They argue, like many do at the moment, that this ‘nanny state’ is an erosion of our privacy.

In written submission to the HGC’s review, a retired senior police officer, said: “It is now the norm to arrest offenders for everything if there is a power to do so. It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons, if not the reason, for the change in practice is so that the DNA of the offender can be obtained: samples can be obtained after arrest but not if there is a report for summons. It matters not, of course, whether the arrest leads to no action, a caution or a charge, because the DNA is kept on the database anyway.”

Currently, a fifth of the five million profiles on the DNA database are people who have done nothing wrong.

If reports are to be believed, then it does seem like the police have an equivalent of sales targets to hit. Of course, believing reports is treacherous in itself. It also appears that young black men are hugely over represented in the government DNA database. There are a lot of issues surrounding it… and one that continues to gnaw away in my brain is the likelihood of some daft git leaving a laptop in a pub with some seriously sensitive issues on (that said, it might mean someone clones me and makes me more efficient and likeable).

Do you think that there’s a problem with the way the police force takes and harvests DNA? Have you been swabbed? Or is this just a hysterical outcry from someone with an agenda?

According to a new survey by a company that has plenty to gain from the results, businesses are potentially exposing their customers to data theft by failing to erase recorded calls containing personal data and credit card information.

The survey by Veritape, which sells business software for recording phone calls in call centres – no interest at all in the results of their own survey, then – claims just three per cent of UK call centres comply with industry guidelines; the other 97 per cent store unedited customer calls. Less than four in ten businesses were aware of the Payment Card Industry rules which state card details must not be stored once transactions have been completed.

Viritape say it is “relatively straightforward” for a hacker to data mine these call recordings, and that “successful hacking incidents are rising steadily.” Everyone else who has blindly reproduced their findings seems to agree with the assessment, even though it appears journalists have simply cut and paste the details. The Times, for example:

“A national poll of UK call centre managers by Veritape, the audio recording specialists…”

Audio recording specialists? According to who, exactly?

Oh. Right. The thing is, we’re struggling to find any notable examples of fraud committed in this way. Despite the claimed ease, we can’t find a single incident of recorded phone conversations been stolen remotely and the data within used to commit credit card fraud. The Telegraph publishes some figures, but these are generic figures that refer to “phone, internet and mail order fraud” rather than capturing data through the very specific method that the entire story rests on. We’re not saying it hasn’t happened, we’re just unsure why an increasingly popular and “relatively straightforward” method of stealing credit card information hasn’t led to several high profile news stories, besides those that appeared today repeating the claims of a survey conducted by a company with a vested interest in the outcome.

Of course it’s not acceptable for call centres to store personal data on the sly, but it’s somewhat difficult to ascertain whether this scaremongering PR exercise highlights any genuine threat to consumers. In the same way that writing your online banking passwords on a slip of paper in Urdu and hiding it under the floorboards potentially puts your finances at risk from burglars, there is a possibility your recorded phonecalls could be hacked – but the problem appears far less significant than anyone, either the company looking to line their pockets or the newspapers desperate to fill their pages, would have you believe.

UPDATED 17/10: The Times has amended their description of Veritape for the print version of the story:

“…Veritape, the audio recording specialists…”

“…Veritape, a software company…”

Thereby proving they didn’t simply shamelessly cut and paste from the original press release. The new version of the story also now attempts to justify Veritape’s claims:

“Veritape says that “data mining” of audio recordings — when criminals hack into the recordings — is relatively straightforward and has occurred in at least one UK bank in the past 12 months.”

So despite the inference by Veritape that this is an increasingly common problem, they have one example of it occurring at one company in the whole country, in a year. That’s one incident, despite thousands of companies using call centres to deal with millions of customer transactions every day – and there’s still no detail of which company it was, when it occurred, how many customers were affected or indeed any other facts concerning the matter.

If your aim is to panic the public (to quote Veritape in the press, “this practice ought to send a shiver up the spine of card providers”) it’s pretty important to have a case study to prove your point, whether you’re the company pushing the research of the media reproducing it as news.

Maybe I’m afraid of people who end their sentences with prepositions. But the larger point is that other people’s rights are not ours to give away. Remember this on cops ads paranoia?

Take this recent bit in The Hunts Post that involves the police asking for a little help from … well, anyone with an Internet connection, actually.

Police in Cambridgeshire are hoping that the woman pushing her shopping trolley in their CCTV picture from  Morrison’s can help them solve a theft. (we can’t post it here due to Hunts Post copyrighting the picture, but you can view it on their site). The police absolve themselves of invading the privacy of the person pictured by stating that she “may not be connected with a crime,” but they’d still really like for her to turn herself in answer a few questions to help out with the investigation.

A CCTV image has been released by police of a woman they would like to speak to in connection with a theft in Cambourne. Officers would like to talk to the pictured woman, who may be able to help with their enquiries into a theft from Morrisons supermarket on February 25.

INFORMATION: The Hunts Post publishes CCTV images in partnership with Cambridgeshire police. The person/people pictured in the image may not be connected with a crime but may be able to help police with their investigations. Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0845 4564564 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555111.

Not only does the image look like any other large average sized and middle-aged female shopper sprawled across a number of Morrisons as we speak, but “publishing a woman’s likeness on the Internet in hopes that by exposing her to the entire online world, we can recover £56 worth of stolen rashers” or something like that raises the question of how far privacy invasion laws are really there to protect the innocent.

[The Hunts Post]