Wi-Fi wardriving expertise drew the engineer into Google’s data collection

Evidence

A 2012 investigation by the Federal Communications Commission described the case as “a deliberate software-design decision by one of the Google employees working on the Street View project.” The engineer had been selected for the team because of his unique expertise in Wi-Fi “wardriving,” the practice of driving around using equipment to locate wireless networks. His design notes indicated that user traffic and location data would be logged along with “information about what they are doing” that would “be analyzed offline for use in other initiatives.” The notes identified but then dismissed “privacy considerations.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 456

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘wardriving’ as the practice of driving around with equipment to locate wireless networks.
• XREF: connects to: Google’s Street View cars secretly harvested personal Wi-Fi payload data. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 452; Google reframed systemic data capture as one engineer’s isolated mistake — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 455; Google’s founders conceived its product as capturing all personal life data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 310

Broader Connections

• Google’s founders conceived its product as capturing all personal life data #exemplifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 310