patrick.net

tvgnus says

, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) may have violated the federal wiretap laws by intercepting unencrypted Wi-Fi signals, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says Tuesday.

And only the NSAis allowed to do that.

In seriousness, this was a good court ruling. It's fine for Google to collect unencrypted wireless metadata that is being broadcast for the purpose of advertising and announcing websites, networks, services, etc. Where they went to far was recording all the wireless data. This was a screw-up and an intentional one. Someone thought the best approach was to record everything and then mine it offline for what is useful and legal. But the mere recording of it was illegal, as it is for the NSA or any other government agency, and that's the problem.

I doubt that Google was being nefarious and intended to collect email conversations, but once they had them, they might have thought, why not mine it? And that is exactly why it is and should be absolutely illegal to collect the data in the first place. And this exact reasoning applies exponentially more to the NSA than to Google.

Four-hundred-thousand apps means 400,000 possibilities for attacks."

The first bit on honesty to come out of the NSA and its from someone who's no longer with the agency.

I'm a bit concerned that I think like that guy.