monopolies are bad
Edgar Wagner, Data Protection Officer of the German federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz has filed criminal charges against Google with 8 state attorneys in Germany. He says Google might have violated ยง202b StGB in their famous Wifi incident, where they not only collected WLAN SSIDs but also unencrypted user traffic.
More details can found in the press release
Again, The Register:
“Robert McClelland, Australia’s Attorney General, has asked the police to investigate the collection of network information by Google’s StreetView cars.
The Australian Federal Police High Tech Crime Centre confirmed to iTnews that it was considering a full probe.
McClelland said his department had received many complaints but it was up to the police to decide if a full investigation is needed. He said there had been possible breaches of the Telecommunications Act.”
“The search and ad giant is already under investigation from privacy watchdogs and police in the Czech Republic and Germany. Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Justice, has also made unhappy noises.”
The Register reports that ‘A patent application published in January describes a method devised by Google for gathering and analyzing data sent via wireless access points. The application says the device “may be placed in a vehicle and data may be obtained continuously or at predetermined time increments” and that the speed of the vehicle “may be factored into the analysis,” according to lawyers suing Google on behalf of people whose traffic may have been collected by the technology.’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/03/google_wardriving_patent/
Another promising Google alternative is DuckDuckGo
According to their self description they offer more privacy, less spam and ads, and less clutter – which is pretty much everything you want :)
Contrary to an earlier announcement Google will be the default search engine in the Firefox web browser of the upcoming Ubuntu release, release manager Rick Spencer says.
In his message to the Ubuntu developers’ mailing list he gives no reasons for this change of plans but says that “the underlying circumstances can change unpredictably”.
