Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing me to a MercuryNews article: “Google's Wi-Fi network in San Francisco raises privacy concerns”. As an ISP, Google will need to capture and track an enormous amount of information, raising concerns among privacy advocates about the prospect of Google monitoring how and where users surf the Web.
The gist is captured in this quote:
"The greatest concern is that once you have that treasure trove of information, will people start to come looking for it?" said Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog group.
At issue is Google's intended use of the data (geographic positioning to serve ads in real time based on location) and a 180-day retention of the data.
I've been watching this for some time, having posted about this a few months back in “What Google knows about you”.