In an interview this morning on ABC Local Radio Melbourne, our esteemed Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, bleated out yet another of his either misinformed statements, complete misunderstandings, or out-and-out untruths.
In regards to the recent ruckus he has been creating over Google’s inadvertent collection of data from WiFi networks, he had this to say (audio download here):
“They’ve been collecting information from Wi-Fi’s that aren’t protected, and so conceivably, it’s possible that as Google drove past your home, if you didn’t have the password protection, and you were typing, err, you were doing your online banking, passing personal information, in a transaction, as they drove past, they could have captured that.”
Minister, banking sites use this thing called “SSL” or “Secure Sockets Layer” to ENCRYPT data in communications between themselves and people running internet banking sessions – whether or not their Wi-Fi network is encrypted is IRRELEVANT.
Are you wrong, completely stupid, ignorant, misleading the public, trying to scare people, lying, or all of the above?