I think you are confusing the wardriving data collection (where they drive around and collect geographic wifi information) with potential automatic geolocation and geoidentification.

Your concern, specifically, is that the Google Toolbar could query your AP/router/etc for its MAC, and then use this information to geoidentify you. There is no evidence that this is happening, and I still believe this would be in violation of, for example, the DMCA. (In other parts of the world, it would certainly be in violation of oher cyberlaws, perhaps pertaining more to privacy than copyright.) Google products require user permission to automatically geolocate; don’t you think that’s at least partly to keep the vote of confidence from their users? If Google Chrome automatically geolocated, for example, then its userbase would certainly shrink, IMHO.

Disregading your hateful name-calling (“ridiculous”, “don’t make any sense” etc) I re-state my original question: what actual problem are you having? And why are you broadcasting your MAC if it’s private to you? You seem to know how 802.11 works, so why not opt out if your MAC is secret? Certainly there are other ways of maintaining a home LAN without exposing your MAC to the world – which is the whole point of an SSID broadcast. The Googlemobile could easily gather much more information (crack WEP, sniff data, geoconnect data, …), but it doesn’t.

Also, the wifi data collection update is irrelevant. It doesn’t pertain to what you’re addressing. And you know it! (Actually, the whole post makes little sense, and the part about “grounding the car” feels extremely far-fetched.)

GO LEGO!

Your arguments don’t make any sense, and your assertion that to question Google’s actions is to be paranoid is ridiculous.

In fact, Google just today admitted it was suspending this data collection (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html) and had previously erroneously claimed they didn’t collect any traffic, but are stopping the practice for now just the same. In the same original post (http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html) they explain the geo-MAC-PC connection method I suggested above, which you seem to think is a DMCA violation.

Also, “all Google needs to do this is to run some local software on my PC” – that sounds a bit like “all a burglar needs to do is break into my house” or whatever. There are laws against Google reporting your router’s MAC via a plugin or a toolbar (DMCA, for example), and there is no evidence that they are breaking them.

What is the actual problem you are having? Or is your tinfoil hat just one size too small?

Why record the wireless router’s MAC address along with the GPS coordinates from the google street view car if it isn’t useful for determining someone’s location?

Again, I’ll make it really simple. If a wireless router is encrypted, it isn’t something anyone outside the home should be listening to. I mean, what’s the harm in a company tapping my physical phone line (in the street) to determine my phone number or whom I call ? Yet, we have laws against it for some reason.

In any case, in order for this information to be useful to break your privacy, you’d need to:
a) Correlate the MAC with an actual, real, _identity_. MACs are assigned basically at random, so just asking where a particular MAC is isn’t of much use. Google does not actually link the MACs with your real identity like that.
b) The owner must move somewhere and redeploy the same router. If someone’s looking for you, and they go by once and record (name, location, MAC), they can just throw out the MAC if you don’t move. And again, google doesn’t collect the name portion of that tuple.
c) Release before-and-after MAC data, based on queries for the name of the owner. As far as I know, google never actually releases this MAC data – they just allow users to give a list of devices nearby, and provide a (somewhat inaccurate) estimate of location.

So I have a hard time seeing how this is a violation of privacy – it’s only useful to get additional information about someone under a lot of hypotheticals, and assuming google collects even more data than it really does.

I don’t see how the Skyhook wardriving makes it ok. If it’s wrong for one, it’s wrong for all, and I recall some uproar when the Skyhook practice was revealed.

But it’s worse if you have enough info to connect the MAC to the IP. By analogy, if credit card companies were also in the business of marketing products, I’d be similarly concerned that they’d exploit my data against my wishes. The fact that CC companies DO exploit my data in other ways also doesn’t make this okay. That needs to stop as well. It’s MY data.

As far as connecting me to my location, all Google needs to do this is to run some local software on my PC, say inside G.Toolbar or G.Desktop that can ping and get the ARP table for my router’s MAC address. Instantly, they would know my local IP and Mac address connected to my web queries and/or google account, and my identity and location would be linked.

So essentially, they have both sides of the information already and it’s up to them to restrain themselves from connecting these two bits of lucrative and useful information until I hit the “locate me” button. It’s only the fact that ARP doesn’t work outside my LAN that holds them back from doing this automatically.

Here’s how it should work. My Personal and Private Information should be locked in a vault, where I alone have the key and can tell if/when/why anyone has accessed it. And if my router uses encryption, then I am implicitly saying that I do not want any information it transmits to be available to anyone but me.

Google is recording the SSID and MAC of your Wireless AP (which may or may not be provided by a router)

… the primary reason for this is devices can then ‘lookup’ their position by observing nearby Wi-Fi AP’s sending the idenifir to a central db – which already knows their location. So Google maps on said device etc can show its locallity.

This can’t be used to track users really. For example you now connecting to a google website from your desktop computer can’t be geolocated by the previouslly recorded ‘wifi’ data.
the Mac address of the router is not propogated though the internet (only the IP) and even if it was, would only be the upstream MAC address, not that of the wireless AP.

Even if you (or someone else) connect though the Wi-fi connection to Google, google still doesnt know where you are. The only way is for the device to seperately query the geolocation database which what IT knows, retrive that, and then send it again to the Google website you using.

So no data not already know is revealed. Yes it now knows the location of your wi-fi hotspot – but it may know that already.

Only if you connect though your connection, and have geolocation technology on your device – and a device that links the too, is a linked formed.

Well that probably made it no clearer, I rubbish at explaining. But I really beleive its not as bad as you seem to make out.