Google Wi-Fi Roundup Has Lawyers Chasing Landmark Jackpot

> Google blamed the mistake on a piece of legacy code from an experimental project that had been re-used to programme equipment on the Street View cars

Somebody at some point specifically wrote code to sniff data off wireless LANs.

Saying it was a mistake does not acknowledge the possible harm actual persons may have suffered. 'Mistake' references the possible harm Google suffered as a result of its actions, e.g. poor press.

It's all EM radiation, but monitoring one vs the other has very different real world implications.

In this particular instance, the plaintiffs had security options available on their wifi transmissions (unlike thermal emissions) and chose to transmit in the clear instead, so that's part of what the case is discussing.

Then Google didn't actually capture their private data, no? Kinda makes it hard to allege damages.

Lawyers love class action suits because while they may only generate a small payout for each plaintiff the law firm running the suit may collect 30% of the payout in return for administering the settlement (writing to all potential plaintiffs, advising them of their rights under the settlement, disbursing payments and so forth). That's a lot of administrative work but for a large settlement it can still bevery lucrative. So much so that in very large lawsuits there is sometimes litigation between competing firms about which is best positioned to represent the plaintiffs, before the main matter is litigated. ISTR that happened with the tobacco litigation by the states in the 1990s, which ultimately involved something like a $20 billion payout.

To bring a civil suit against another party, you must have standing, which means you must be able to show that you, personally, suffered damage at the hand of the other party. These 22 people can't just sue Google for damages on behalf of everyone whose data was allegedly hoovered up by StreetView, they have to prove that their data was collected. If they can't, then other people could bring the same suit and look for their data in the evidence as well.

Once a defendant or defendants prove that they have standing to bring the case, they could then petition the judge to certify a class action, at which point the lawyers representing the class would ask for discovery to find and notify all the other class members.

I view this as a very valuable rule of law; without this, there are attorneys who would just spend all day filing speculative lawsuits in hopes of forming a class action.

One other notable places this rule has come into play in the recent past: in litigation around gay marriage, when the government refused to defend its marriage discrimination laws, religious groups tried to step in to take on the defense, only to be told they had no standing because they were not being harmed by other people getting married.