> if you are worried about people recording data broadcast by your WiFi router, it's up to you to secure your network
So that makes it okay for Google to Hoover up? This attitude is why a lot of people are angry at big tech right now. Elitism and arrogance bordering on hubris, but zero self awareness.
"If it is not clearly illegal, I have a god-given right to monetize it and then try to exclude you from it."
-- FB, Google, et al on the Commons
To be fair, it isn't just them. A disturbingly large number of people in the US appear to believe acknowledging any commonweal is counter to national ideology.
Nobody's excluded from doing their own wardriving and data-collection on open SSID network names, as far as I'm aware. Hell, if someone just wanted to drive around and record the radio flux sans information, perhaps to build a fun map correlating population density or income levels to broadcast emissions, that's perfectly fair.
It is clearly a general belief everywhere that if you can get some utility out of something and you can manage to do that for free then you should. HN does it with paywall bypasses, piracy, etc.
Completely unsurprising that if you take a group of people, each of whom individually believe in deriving utility from things they can get with or without permission, then that collective group also behaves in the same manner.
So that makes it okay for Google to Hoover up? This attitude is why a lot of people are angry at big tech right now. Elitism and arrogance bordering on hubris, but zero self awareness.