Something I've had a hard time understanding through all this is WHY they thought it was a good idea to record SSIDs and other information while doing a street mapping.
I don't understand what they were hoping to gain from this information?
According to our research, 72.438% of people don't secure their wireless.
According to our research, (I'm assuming they got mac addresses too, right?) 83.4% of all wireless consumer routers in Germany are Linksys routers.
WTF does that have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with mapping streets?
Oh, and for the people getting all up in arms because "people are shouting this information freely and anyone can hear it"...that's patently FALSE. There's maybe 1% of the population that has the know-how or the desire to do that. It is NOT AT ALL event remotely the same as standing in the middle of the street yelling at someone where anyone can hear you. You have no choice but to over hear if you happen to be in the area. You do, however, have a choice in downloading packet-sniffing software and using it on someone's wireless network, unsecured or not.