Rasheed,+Hussain



CCT355: Article Analysis Rasheed Hussain 995 426 347 Nov 1, 2010 Prof. Michael Jones

** Google Street View Breaches Privacy: Commissioner ** (Relation to E-Business Technology = Data Mining and BI databases)



In Ottawa, Canada’s privacy commissioner conducted an investigation which found Google in breach of Canadian privacy laws. This was a result of Google’s use of their specially designed vehicles to capture Canadian streets for their Street View technology. The investigation found that these vehicles were able to capture e-mails, passwords, usernames and other personal information from unsecured wireless networks in neighbourhoods around Canada.

The privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddat points blame at Google’s engineers for their lack of privacy controls and states that this incident was a serious violation of the privacy rights of Canadian citizens. This also raises questions about the impact of new and rapidly evolving technologies in relation to personal privacy.

However, Google denied that they knew a portion of their code in the software associated with the Street View cars were able to gather content from wireless networks. The code was put in place by one of Google’s engineers in 2006, though Google states that it was not aware of this.

This article raises many questions in term of personal privacy. In the past, Google was able to get out of many lawsuits surrounding Street View by stating they simply took pictures in public areas. It will be interesting to see how this issue will be resolved and if Google will be the successor. Also this article makes you question what Google is going to do with the data, if it’s been sold, who does the information belong to and how many people have been affected.

In term of E-business technology, Google has stumbled upon a new method of data mining that could potentially be used by other companies to gather and sell information about you.

** Work Cited: **

"Google Street View Breached Privacy: Commissioner." //Vancouver Sun//. Postmedia News, 20 Oct. 2010. Web. 29 Oct. 2010. .

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