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Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

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Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#131

Post by DCKing »

paulojreis wrote: post #127
DCKing wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works in IT, I always feel ashamed to see outrage over this. We somehow want both privacy as well as a freaking radio beacon spreading out a signal to hundreds of meters away. Let there be no mistake: using a Wi-Fi router in your house means you are voluntarily broadcasting an identifier to anyone within hundreds of meters. There can be no honest expectation of privacy there. If you don't want people o…

> I know that a lot of people are not aware of the privacy consequences, but those people are not the ones making a point out of this. Of course they are not making a point - they are not aware. How would you expect them to make a point? What you saying is: if they don't know enough about the subject to decide if a point should be made, then we should ignore the right to give (or not) an informed consent (because you…

How about we stop being so condescending, educate people to make an informed choice, and stop asking Google, Mozilla and anyone with a smartphone to think for them?

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#132

Post by scrollaway »

justcommenting wrote: post #130
scrollaway wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> saving/processing This data was recorded . It was not processed, it was not saved, and it was not filed under "lets-take-a-look-at-the-passwords-in-this-log.txt". The engineers thought "Hey, let's capture wifi data in aggregate and do cool geolocation stuff!" and ran with it without considering the fact that, in such data would probably be cleartext passwords. As for time and money, those are two things Google has…

> ran with it without considering the fact that, in such data would probably be cleartext passwords. This part, I just don't buy. Maybe full-take captures was the most expeditious at the time, but to me the notion that Google's engineers didn't know or didn't realize that they would end up doing a lot of "incidental collection" in the process is laughable.

> This part, I just don't buy.

And yet it's the one that Hanlon's razor explains very well. Goes to show that being terse in my original comment was the right move and you just can't wrap your head around the idea that, around the world, people do stuff without considering the consequences.

The people in charge of your country, of your internet, of your health and your whole life, they're all humans and don't have weird superpowers, omniscience or anything like that. They make mistakes, and a lot of them are going to do stupid stuff. Consequences may vary.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#133

Post by cpeterso »

crankycoder1975 wrote: post #65
justcommenting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that would be one respectful way to do it, and yes, challenging. but the premise of your comment is that of course my device's SSID and related location should be collected in someone else's database because a google-funded nonprofit wrote an app for people to go wardriving with. just because SSIDs can be legally observed and collected doesn't mean i have to be happy about it. I wasn't talking about this as a technic…

Hey, we're happy to hear about privacy concerns and ways that these might be addressed. As for collecting your SSID information - devices are already storing SSIDs to do an active scan. If you're not happy that the Mozilla Stumbler can record that SSID, you should probably also be unhappy that all WiFi devices capable doing a probe request - which is basically all wifi devices. As far as the ethics concern - I'll bit…

Just to clarify, the Mozilla Stumbler apps looks at SSIDs (to filter out "_nomap" and known mobile phone and transportation networks), but the SSIDs are not reported to the Mozilla Location Service. The BSSID/MAC addresses are, though.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#134

Post by cpeterso »

towelguy wrote: post #123
crankycoder1975 wrote: post #2

Hi all! We cut a 1.0 release of the Mozilla Stumbler finally. Have at it. File the bugs. Complain about battery life. Help us make this thing not suck and build out a proper open location service.

I see there is a leaderboard, so users have a nick, but can we contribute anonymously without signing up? Also, why do you need access to my photos?

Yes, anonymous is the default mode. :) The nickname is optional and only used to record a leaderboard "points". The nickname is not tied to any reported Wi-Fi or location data.

Mozilla Stumbler does not need to access your photos; it just needs to read/write to your sdcard (to cache map tile graphics and export KML data). "Access your photots" is Google's unfortunate explanation of accessing the sdcard.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#135

Post by cpeterso »

tonylemesmer wrote: post #18

As an Android user, is it possible to modify my phone to use this service instead of Google's? Is it possible to upload the database directly to a phone or replace an APK to achieve this?

You can test the Mozilla Location Service with Firefox on your desktop by changing your "geo.wifi.uri" about:config pref to:

  https://location.services.mozilla.com/v1/geolocate?key=test
Then try using a geolocation service like Google Maps or http://html5demos.com/geo . If it can't find your location, check Mozilla's zoomable coverage map to see if your neighborhood is covered: https://location.services.mozilla.com/map . If not, please consider installing Mozilla Stumbler to help map it. :)

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#136

Post by paulojreis »

DCKing wrote: post #131
paulojreis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know that a lot of people are not aware of the privacy consequences, but those people are not the ones making a point out of this. Of course they are not making a point - they are not aware. How would you expect them to make a point? What you saying is: if they don't know enough about the subject to decide if a point should be made, then we should ignore the right to give (or not) an informed consent (because you…

How about we stop being so condescending, educate people to make an informed choice, and stop asking Google, Mozilla and anyone with a smartphone to think for them?

I totally agree, and that's not the issue at stake. The issue is: what should we do while people are not educated enough to make an informed decision?

Mozilla, Google (and some people in this thread) assume that it's right for them to decide if there are privacy concerns and advance with their initiatives. I don't. And they are, by marking this as opt-in, thinking for them.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#137

Post by DCKing »

justcommenting wrote: post #126
DCKing wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't find "anything that can be picked up passively from public property is fair game" a very compelling ethical standard This is a strawman. Any public information that can be picked up passively from public property is fair game is the real argument. Decrypting WEP, easy enough as it might be, is still unethical as the information was meant to be private. Making a database of public SSID broadcasts is co…

you're arguing that there's a clearly defined category of broadcasted signals that can be clearly defined as public; i'm arguing that at least in ethical terms, what matters is whether the person behind the device knows and understands that their signal is leaking, where, and how that information could be used. for most people most of the time, i don't think that's the case. maybe we should agree to disagree :-)

> you're arguing that there's a clearly defined category of broadcasted signals that can be clearly defined as public;

This is another strawman.

I'm not arguing for a particular clear-cut definition of "public" and "private" at all. I'm arguing that the distinction public and private can be made for some forms of communication, and that a radio broadcast to your neighborhood means it is public, and encrypting your traffic means it is private. In addition to that there is also a greyer area like unencrypted traffic over a wire, that should mostly be considered private from an ethical perspective.

I agree that most people don't really know what they're doing, and I agree that it is problem. I also think that most people don't really care, and considering no information is contained in most SSIDs rightly so. Lastly I think that education is important for this, not regulation (legislative or internal) for the collecting companies or individuals. But all of that is not what I was arguing against.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#138

Post by cpeterso »

hippiehippo wrote: post #15
cpeterso wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A stumbler user's identity or location could be revealed by tracing routes from published GPS data or maps. In areas without much stumbler data coverage, you can see clear routes along highways and some residential streets. Owners of Wi-Fi access points, including mobile phones with sharing Wi-Fi, may not want their unique BSSID/MAC address and location published. This is not exactly comparable to the Google Wi-Fi ca…

About that map, a feature I would like is to fade spots which were scanned long time ago because WiFi access points might not last as long as cell towers. This way, as a contributor, I know in which areas to scan and, as a regular user, I know that the data for a specific area might be too old.

That's a good idea. The Stumbler app shows the coverage map (as blue clouds) on your mobile device, so you can see which individual streets are yet to be stumbled. Right now, our database is small and young enough that rescanning old data is not a high priority.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#139

Post by cpeterso »

towolf wrote: post #129

Any info about how multiple fixes are integrated to approximate the true location of a fix? I remember reading how Wigle Wardriving calculated fixes and the method seemed unsophisticated and lame. For example, if I bike down a street then fixes would be detected 100m ahead of me and always pinned to the road at my current location. If I bike down the road in the other direction the next time, will be fix become more…

The server code is on GitHub, but I don't know offhand where the offline geolocation scripts are. The Stumbler app's map will show your phone's GPS position (blue dots) and Mozilla Location Service's estimate (red dots) so you can compare the difference.

https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea

We store signal strength for possible future use, but our current location algorithms don't use it. Wireless signal strength is notoriously flaky. From some reports I've read, signal strength is more highly correlated with the user's orientation (i.e. is their body blocking the signal to the source) than with distance to the source.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#140

Post by DCKing »

fulafel wrote: post #121
DCKing wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that having a Wi-Fi router means actively powering a device that sends a signal beyond the perimeter and privacy of your home. A signal that, as evidenced by this app, can be passively [1] picked up and processed by any casual passer-by. Having a Wi-Fi router with an SSID is the equivalent of installing a speaker on the top of your house and have it constantly spell a uniquish name to the neighbo…

Having the lights on in your living room or exercising your vocal cords still fit your description.

Neither of these have either:

1) The same accessibility for a passerby outside of your house.

2) The same constant, location identifying properties or information content.

The things you mention cannot be described as beacons.

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