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Saturday 2 June 2012

Sinister truth about Google spies: Street View cars stole information from British households but executives 'covered it up' for years


Let's be honest: we all suspected that those roaming Google cars were up to more than taking pictures of roads, and didn't want to believe it, but now we know for sure. This is something that should send a shiver down the spine of every UK resident for it's clear that Google has been harvesting lots of personal information through unencrypted wireless networks. What they will do with this information is the scary part. Big Brother is definitely coming to a town near you soon.

Google, pictured street-mapping in Bristol, has always claimed that it didn't know its software would collect the private information
Google, pictured street-mapping in Bristol, has always claimed that it didn't know its software would collect the private information.

Now Google is facing an inquiry into claims that it deliberately harvested information from millions of UK home computers. The Information Commissioner data protection watchdog is expected to examine the work of the internet giant’s Street View cars. They downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from wi-fi networks as they photographed virtually every British road.

It is two years since Google first admitted stealing fragments of personal data, but claimed it was a ‘mistake’. Now the full scale of its activities has emerged amid accusations of a cover-up after US regulators found a senior manager was warned as early as 2007 that the information was being captured as its cars trawled the country but did nothing.

Around one in four home networks in the UK is thought to be unsecured – lacking password protection – allowing personal data to be collected. Technology websites and bloggers have suggested that Google harvested the information simply because it was able to do so and would later work out a way to use it to make money.

Ordinary people need to wise up. The days when you had complete privacy in your own home are over and, with the millions of cameras out in public streets, you have to ask yourself a fundamental questions: is there anywhere completely private in this world nowadays?

Dead Spanish man lay undiscovered at home for up to 20 years

How can this happen in today's society? Do we really have so little contact with those close to us that they can "shuffle off this mortal coil" without us even knowing or seemingly caring?
It's just been reported that the remains of a Spanish man have been found lying in the corridor of his terraced house in the north-western village of Canizal some 20 years after he died. Police looking for clues to the date of Vicente Benito's death point to the fact that the only coins and banknotes they could find in the house were denominated in pesetas, suggesting he had died well before the euro was introduced in 2002.

Spanish pesetas 
 
The only money found in Vicente Benito's home was in pesetas – replaced by the euro in 2002. Photograph: CBW/Alamy

In fact nobody had seen Benito for almost two decades, though none of his neighbours in the village of 520 people thought there was anything peculiar about him failing to answer his doorbell for so long. They long ago gave up ringing on it, assuming he had moved to neighbouring Portugal. There were rumours he had found a girlfriend, or was working as a shepherd in some other part of the world.

A few people remember being angry that he had left a dog tied to the metal bars across a window that gave straight on to the street, but that was a decade or two ago. The dog was eventually cut loose and taken in by a neighbour, but no one tried to find out if Benito was ill in bed or somehow unable to get of his tiny house.

"We think he was last seen at least 15 years ago, but no one is sure," the mayor, Miguel Angel Herrero, explained. Earlier this week, however, a nephew who lived in the village decided to break into his uncle's house. "They say he wanted to see what had happened to his uncle," a neighbour told the local La OpiniĆ³n de Zamora newspaper.

Well it was about time that someone decided to bite the bullet and try to find out what happened to a family member. What if he hadn't? Poor old uncle Benito could've been there for another 10 years! Perish the thought!

Read more:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/01/dead-spanish-man-undiscovered-home