Not only is Google tracking you but your government is doing the same. Search your local hard drive and your computer connects to a server at Microsoft. All of your e-mails, financial transactions, computer hard drives and even telephone conversations are subject to warrantless search by government if you travel outside the US, call outside the US, or e-mail outside the US. Well how do you know where I am when we communicate? You don't so they just have free run on everyone. If privacy matters to you, don't use a computer. If you're outraged about constitutional rights violations, join the club and submit to it or change your life; dump the phone & email, live on cash in a forrest. You have no choice. Others make the decisions for you "in your best interest". I have no problem with NSA eavesdropping. CIA as well for that matter. But their authorizations and what they do with what they find should be limited to their mission. If they're snooping for the next big event and they come across where you speak to a neighbor that you caught your kid stealing ice cream at the supermarket, and cops show up to arrest your kid, that's overstepping their bounds and unacceptable in my opinion. But my opinion is worthless. When I visit a news site and it wants me to check some check boxes so they can "provide me a better service at no cost to me" I always say I'm the 90 year old woman. Sure enough, ads for tampons appear. Know any 90 year old women who have not passed menopause?
Any why do you think GPS is in cell phones? For your welfare in the event of an emergency? It's all about the government tracking people. The 911 is an excuse to violate your rights. Saddest part is modern generations are used to it, think it's normal and submit to it. "If it makes us safer then I'm all for it." Why should your government track your travel WITHIN OUR BORDERS? I have no problem with an airline making sure their flight is safe, but I don't think government has standing to compel us to present travel documents, identification, etc. to government as a condition to travel within our borders. That task that TSA does today should be done by the airlines subjec to government approval of their operational plans. If government wants to have the national guard standing beside or behind the security screeners, I have no problem with that either if it keeps whack jobs from rushing airplanes and crashing them into cities.
Why do you think Google does this? Obviously because YOU are more likely to click on Metastock ads than Gardening ads. They've been tracking you since 2003. On every site where they advertise there is a privacy policy explaining the cookie they use to do this. Some people..
Yes, seems a little naive in the year 2010 to be surprised and outraged after discovering cookies are used to track your web browsing (cookies being an integral part of browsers for 15 years), and that Gmail scans your emails for targeted advertising (highly publised and debated since Gmail's inception in 2004).
How about Google collecting Wifi access point info from neighborhoods when they do the Street View van... Is it naive to be concerned about that too? this goes overboard at some point... no, I don't care that they try and you can shut it off if you don't want to be tracked anyway but Google is starting to cross a line with some of these "services"
I agree - Google recording the Mac address of wireless networks does seem to be a little too personal. It seems a bit unnecessary and probably not that useful as well. It would only include a limited number of households and would only identify someone who's internet connection is the same device as their local network. They can already tell what city and general location you're in - so knowing who some of your neighbours are doesn't seem that much more useful -especially as most people don't know who their own neighbours are anyway. Although, I suspect that with a little bit of analysis of the info they already have collected - via gmail etc - Google could easily determine exactly who you are anyway - and it doesn't bother me that much. People need to start recognising that browsing the internet is a public exercise - just like walking down the street. But then when Google becomes your ISP http://www.google.com/tisp/ - they won't have to scan anything - they'll already everything about you
MAC addresses are layer two, they do not propagate past the first router your traffic crosses. When you connect to Google, they don't see your MAC address or the MAC address of your router - they see the MAC address of the last router hop in the path between you and Google - in other words the MAC they see has no information about the original source (you)
I think what we have here is the fact that the business of advertising and marketing is more intrusive and agreater invasion of privacy than the Gov't. Every click of the mouse, eye movements (think macy's display windows, among many other seemingly casual activities and someone somewhere will pay for that info.