That decision, the first of its kind, was handed down late Wednesday by a Silicon Valley federal judge presiding over nearly a dozen combined lawsuits seeking damages from Google for eavesdropping on open 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.
“The court finds that plaintiffs plead facts sufficient to state a claim for violation of the Wiretap Act. In particular, plaintiffs plead that defendant intentionally created, approved of, and installed specially-designed software and technology into its Google Street View vehicles and used this technology to intercept plaintiffs’ data packets, arguably electronic communications, from plaintiffs’ personal Wi-Fi networks,” U.S. District Judge James Ware ruled. “Further, plaintiffs plead that the data packets were transmitted over Wi-Fi networks that were configured such that the packets were not readable by the general public without the use of sophisticated packet-sniffer technology.” (.pdf)
Judge Ware’s ruling is important not only to Google, but to the millions who use open, unencrypted Wi-Fi networks at coffee shops, restaurants or any other business that tries to attract customers by providing Wi-Fi. The decision comes on the heels of a Federal Trade Commission antitrust probe into Google’s search and ad businesses, and comes as attorneys general from several states are settling an inquiry into the Wi-Fi affair. More
