More And More Lawsuits Filed Against Google Over Street View WiFi Slurping

Privacy

from the evidence? dept

We’ve already covered one class action lawsuit filed against Google for its WiFi data slurping activities, and it appears that lots and lots of lawyers are trying to jump into the game. Eric Goldman has a list of at least seven such class action lawsuits that have been filed already. While we agree that Google’s actions were bad, and do deserve some scrutiny, I find it difficult to believe these lawsuits can get anywhere. In the first one that we covered, we noted that one of the complaints was from a woman who sent confidential company data via her own, unsecured WiFi access point, and we couldn’t figure out how that was Google’s fault.

The real issue, though, is that it will be nearly impossible (if not impossible) for anyone in any of these lawsuits to first show that any of their specific data was recorded by Google, and secondly, that any harm came to them because of it. And, as we’ve noted multiple times, the courts seem to want to (a) see actual privacy being breached, rather than theoretical privacy being breached and (b) see actually harm come to the plaintiffs from those breaches. Without either of those things, it’s hard to see these lawsuits getting very far.

As Goldman notes, not at all sarcastically:

It’s remarkable that these lawyers were able to conclude to their satisfaction that their named plaintiffs in fact had their payload data captured in the process–presumably by confirming that payload data was actually being transmitted at the precise time the cars drove by. I’m not sure how I would research this issue sufficient to satisfy my Rule 11 obligation, but these attorneys surely didn’t just assume Google captured their clients’ payload data…did they?

Filed Under: class action, harm, lawsuits, wifi
Companies: google