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It’s war!

It would be too easy to describe this as a David vs. Goliath scenario except that it raises questions about who is the bigger brother…

Stephen Conroy has used a senate hearing to blast Google (and Facebook) over privacy issues – with a particular focus on Google’s recent collection of information relating to WiFi devices in the course of its Street View campaign.

Of course, there’s nothing new about web sites that list WiFi access points on maps – back in the day when Bigpond were sending out unsecured Motorola WiFi routers to their best cable customers, these sites were in fact quite useful if you needed to quickly borrow a little bandwidth. Naturally the software has been around for quite a while too, even if Stephen would like you to believe that Google wrote a piece of uniquely malevolent code.

Admittedly Google’s “accidental” excuse doesn’t quite stack up (wait a minute… does that not pertain to an entirely different country?). Nevertheless Conroy capitalised on the opportunity to avoid discussing the real issues by getting back at Google for their criticism over his proposed filter. And we would imagine that he was still a bit miffed about the lack of cooperation he got over the issue of Youtube filtering as well.

Google’s response?

“We were surprised to hear more discussion about Google and Facebook than about the actual proposed filter”

We’ll post the full record from the Hansard when it becomes available.