Wired - Google is demanding a federal judge grant it permission to appeal a decision that approved a federal wiretapping lawsuit over its interception of unencrypted Wi-Fi traffic.
The Mountain View, California, media giant responded late Friday to a Silicon Valley federal judge’s June 29 decision in nearly a dozen combined lawsuits seeking damages from Google for eavesdropping on open, unencrypted Wi-Fi networks from its Street View mapping cars. The vehicles, which rolled through neighborhoods across the country, were equipped with Wi-Fi–sniffing hardware to record the names and MAC addresses of routers to improve Google location-specific services. But the cars also secretly gathered snippets of Americans’ data.
Google claims it is was not a breach of the Wiretap Act to intercept data from unencrypted, or non-password-protected Wi-Fi networks. Google said open Wi-Fi networks are akin to “radio communications” like AM/FM radio, citizens’ band and police and fire bands, and are “readily accessible” to the general public — a position rejected by U.S. District Judge James Ware.
“Google takes a different view,” Google attorney Michael Ruben wrote Ware in the new filing.
It was the first ruling (.pdf) of its kind, and Google wants the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review Ware’s decision “before forcing it to proceed with protracted litigation at the district court,” Ruben wrote. More
