Hyperbole - the game anyone can play. You've had your turn, me next.

I agree. Since money is the only moral factor to consider here, I'm looking forward to when governments begin to protect the narcotics industry. Narcotics are a significant portion of many economies and is intertwined with much of the world's economy. Narcotics are a benefit to large and small crime syndicates and even benefits individual dealers and users.

And yet various technical industries are paved with good products that failed in the market. Huh.

There are a number of /. readers who should kill you where you stand.

You're using fear words like "terror" as if that should invoke something. I suspect you're confused. Let me re-hash my points so you don't overlook them.

Google is doing nothing overtly strange. The war-driving Google was doing is no different than the war-driving thousands of others are doing. I do it because I find it interesting to see what's out there. Google does it because it wants to map whats out there and use it as another source for geolocation. In both cases, the "personal data" that's being picked up is accidental.

Why do I say your concerns are misplaced? Because, as far as I can tell, you're misguided in to thinking Google is running around logging personal information and feeding it in to their vast data trove. Of course - that's my assumption because, despite your snarky comments on me "ploinking" your points, you haven't made much of an effort yourself at explaining your point and are rather quick to dismiss anything that doesn't fall in line with your general fear-of-Google line.

I should point out to you that war-driving is an ineffective way to gather information. You will, by chance, pick up bits and pieces here and there; an email password, maybe a partial web page, etc. Most of the packet capture is going to be pretty useless. Part of that is due to moving around and altering signal strength. A lot of it is due to the need to hop channels to find access points. If you really wanted to gather data, you would war drive first to identify your target and then sit stationary at a target for an extended period of time to capture traffic. I have seen nothing that indicates that this is what Google was doing.

And so, with further clarification in mind, I repeat... I get your concern for privacy but I find it misplaced. You really should worry more about people like me. Or, worse yet, people with the same basic skillset as me but motivated to do something nefarious with that skillset.

No. Pointing at me. I'm one of those people.

Fair enough point. But scale alone does change things. What's legal for me is legal for Google.

You're entirely wrong. Public officials care very much about perception. They do a lot of things for perception alone. They may not care about a particular individual. But they will do things to make large groups of people feel good about them and their job (or future jobs).

You're probably going to be terrified at what you find at google.com then. They scan open systems every day. Put in the right search and you'll find passwords and other private information.

I get your concern. But it is misplaced.

They would ignore it. Fun fact for you: Google was doing the same thing thousands of hobbiests are doing every day using the same tools. But it's different for Google since there's political hay to be made.

Think about that for a minute. "Doing some research" does not mean you're well informed or otherwise any less clueless for the effort. Consider all the psuedo-science and crack-pot conspiracy sites out there - and the people who swear those are The Truth They Don't Want You to Know.

You're actually cutting edge. You've out-sourced your personal information security and set up a fully flexible payment schedule to support it. You're clearly executive material and deserve that Rolux you've had your eye on.

Part of the problem is expecting there to be just two sides of a story and then arbitrarily picking what the other side is.

Right. Sort of my point. Wargames compares closer to Hackers than it does Sneakers.

I don't often hear people call out Sneakers as being an inspiration. Wargames was for me and I've seen that I'm not alone in that. I was rather shocked to find out Hackers is for others.

Sneakers was a good film, though. I'd put closer in my personal list to Wargames.

I propose a new flame war: War Games vs. Hackers. I'm firmly in the War Games camp and find Hackers to be an unintentional comedy.

To some extent, you're asking the wrong question. The issue isn't whether information has been leaked. The issue is what the classification of the document is. Until that classification is changed, the document is handled accordingly. It isn't up to the rank-and-file to determine whether a classification should or shouldn't be adhered to. The rules don't change because the situation is not normal.

Yes - because the people who had a need to know didn't already have access to these documents. Like... say... a young intel analyst.

There's a difference between the classification of the document and the information the document contains. Information may be out in the public or in an adversary's hands. But the document remains classified until it is unclassified. The rank-and-file are required to continue handling the document accordingly. Another way of looking at it is that uncovering classified information by sourcing unclassified sources does not alter the classification of a document. It may be part of the process to decide to re-classify. But it is not automatic.