Speaking to sources familiar with the matter, Reuters has found that a White House probe into Huawei turned up nothing. The company is being just that – a company. There’s no clear evidence that they are working with the Chinese government to undermine American infrastructure.

With that being said, the probe did find something very interesting. Most of Huawei’s products can be easily exploited by hackers. In particular, Huawei-made routers have bad code that investigators say is the result of poor coding, not intentional sabotage. The fear now is that Huawei’s products could be used by any private or state-sponsored hackers to gain access to privately stored information.

Other sources speaking to Reuters say the bad code was deliberate. A computer scientist told them that Huawei’s routers contain “back doors” that he feels were deliberately inserted “with care.” If the company was spying, it would allow them to siphon data from citizens and government entities using the routers.

In their defense, Huawei’s US spokesperson Bill Plummer said that the company’s products do not contain any backdoors. He also points out that all hardware is susceptible to hackers, and that Huawei would fix any vulnerabilities found in their products.

For now, the probe hasn’t found any damning evidence. That means Huawei is in the clear for now, but the House Intelligence Committee will most likely not back down. Co-author of the House Intelligence Committee report, Dutch Ruppersberger, told Reuters that “China has the means, opportunity, and motive to use telecommunications companies for malicious purposes.”

It’s almost looking like America is ready to enter a new Cold War with China. A big problem with that is that China has far more resources at their disposal than the Soviet Union ever did. The advanced technology at both countries’ disposal could make things far more complicated as well. It’s been said before that the next World War would be fought over the Internet, and events like this make that future seem all the more possible.

In a massive and rather frank post on the Skype blog, CVP Mark Gillett addresses all the concerns that people have in regards to privacy and Skype. He says that every single accusation levied against the company is false and that they are still the consumer friendly company they have always been.

The accusation that started all of this was the changes to Skype’s architecture. Gillett says that Skype made the changes “to provide the best possible product to our users.” He says that the company was already in the process of moving supernodes to the cloud long before they were acquired by Microsoft.

As for their cooperation with law enforcement, Gillett claims that their policy has not changed since 2005. They will accomodate law enforcement when it “follows appropriate procedures” and they “respond where legally required and technically feasible.”

The move to in-house hosting does not give Skype the ability to monitor or record your conversations. The in-house servers were only added help establish calls. The data that’s transferred during calls (audio and video) are only passed between the two Skype clients and never through their servers.

The company addressed the claims from the Washington Post that said Skype was actively monitoring instant messages on Skype. Gillett does say that messages are stored on their servers temporarily if the message can’t get through to another user. The key word is temporarily as they are never hosted on their servers for that long. They will of course respond to legitimate law enforcement requests whenever possible in regards to instant messages.

The company has also not skimped out on protecting your conversations from other prying eyes. Gillett says that Skype still applies the same encryption to messages that it always has. The only version of Skype that has been altered is the version available in China, which allows for a chat filter in accordance with local laws.

As I said, it’s surprising to see Skype’s CVP be so frank about his company’s operations. Of course, the company’s hand was forced as stories of surveillance and unwarranted wiretapping became the norm when Skype was mentioned in the news. There will still be those who believe Skype is spying on them, but Gillett’s responses should help calm the majority of people who were concerned.

I might have spoken too soon as the folks at The Washington Post spoke to a couple of people close to the matter to get the real story. They found that Skype is spying on you, but only your text chats. The company can’t effectively share your audio and video logs with authorities, but they will cooperate with police if they have a suspicion that you’re up to no good.

Before you get all worried, know that Microsoft is treating your data with “tremendous sensitivity and a canny awareness of what the issues would be.” That probably doesn’t make you any less worried, but it looks like Microsoft is just cooperating with police when the need arises.

The authorities don’t care that you use Skype to keep in touch with your parents or that you send messages to your long distance significant others. What they care about is nabbing the criminals who use Skype because it has traditionally been more secure than other forms of communication.

Of course, these criminals are going to move from Skype now that the news is out. It seems that the authorities are always one step behind the technology curve, but they’re fine with gutting other forms of communication while they’re trying to play catch up. Skype will not necessarily fall to the hands of the authorities in their misguided attempt to catch criminals, but it might have the negative consequence of forcing legitimate users to leave over concerns of privacy.

Today, The Telegraph has obtained and published in full a copy of Fleischer’s reply to the ICO and, unsurprising, Google resorts to the most commonly accepted form of apology in our modern era: the non-apology.

Fleischer’s lengthy missive to the ICO begins with how “profoundly sorry” the company was about the payload data collection then reminisced about Google’s cooperation with the ICO. However, before individually addressing each of Eckersley’s questions, Fleischer added, “Google is surprised that the ICO has decided to re-open its investigation into this matter,” and proceeded to redirect the ICO with an undue lesson in data storage as well as adherence to the story that Google didn’t know nothin’ about no Street View spying before 2010.

Fleischer continues to attest that Google doesn’t actually know what is included in the collected data apart from what it supplied the ICO with in 2010 because it hasn’t looked at it. Whether you believe that or not is up to you, but given Google’s bloodlust for consumer information, believing that Google wouldn’t access that data is akin to expecting that a rabid pack of cheetahs wouldn’t run down a zebra coated in bacon grease.

However, Google did comply with the ICO’s request to supply a copy of the original software design with the reply. Fleischer also included “certificates of destruction in respect of payload data collected in the UK” and closed the letter with the suggestion that the ICO should have no other questions for Google.

That last part is a dry pill to swallow. I understand that this is legal-speak politesse, leading an investigator into agreeing that, yes, there is nothing more to see here, but that is ingenuine. In all truth, there may be nothing left to see here but it’s hard to take Google at its word because the company has become a masterful escape artist when it comes to directly answering questions. With that history of obfuscation never far behind, Google should leave it to the ICO to decide when the investigation is over.

Perhaps emboldened by his government’s decision to reopen its investigation of Google, The Daily Mail‘s David Thomas has declared a one-man battle with the company in order to find out just what information may have been secretly lifted from his online life when the Street View car cruised his way.

In a spirited op-ed published yesterday in the Mail, Thomas describes how he was working from home at the time he suspects Google may have sopped up some of his personal information, including financial discussions with his agent, confidential medical information, and material related to his writing (he is an author). Thomas is rightfully upset about his information possibly being secretly collected by Google and although he admits that he was naive to believe it was unnecessary to secure his wi-fi network because he lives in the countryside of West Essex, he isn’t about to let Google off the hook.

Although the ICO has decided to reopen its inquiry into Google, Thomas intends to pursue his own crusade against the mapping service. Citing Britain’s Data Protection Act of 1998, he wrote of his plans to extract from Google what information of his the company may have in its possession.

The Data Protection Act gives us all the right to demand the information an organisation (whether public body or commercial corporation) holds about us. It’s called a Subject Access Request. It costs between £2 and £10, and a reply must be received within 40 days.

So I have decided to make my own small stand against the Google monster. I want to know what it knows about me, and what it might have stolen. If the Street View cars stole data from my system, and it hasn’t yet been destroyed, then I want to know what they’ve got.

And if Google has been passing my personal information on to third-party companies so they can bombard me with advertising, I want to know about that, too.

I’m in no way a sharp tack when it comes to legal issues, but to my mind the United States doesn’t have a comparable law to the UK’s Data Protect Act. While we yankees might not have the same legal opportunities to see what (if any) information was collected on us over here States-side, if Thomas is successful in obtaining any of the information that Google may have obtained from him it could provide some insights of how big this trove of payload data really is.

On the other hand, while Google’s practice of collecting user information with their secret wardriving Street View cars is shady any way you look at it, the potential for Google to scrape off tons of sensitive information from each person on each wi-fi network the Street View cars pass is questionable. For one, if the average speed limit is 25 miles per hour in these neighborhoods where the Street View car travels, that’s an extremely narrow window to collect any information off of any random wi-fi-connected devices. Two, the reach of most home wi-fi networks doesn’t really produce the most powerful connection; if I walk out to my driveway I lose the connection from my apartment that’s less than 60 feet away. Trying to connect from a car in the middle of my street? Not really feasible.

Still, Google got something from wardriving software, we just don’t know what. Google was contacted for comment for this article and asked if it had any intention to comply with the ICO’s requests, but Google did not reply.

Thomas might be escalating this issue further than it deserves to go, or maybe he’s unimpeachably righteous in his effort against Google. There’s no way to tell, and there will not be any way to tell until Google becomes more transparent about the types and depths of information its Google Street View cars collected, which is why Thomas’ determined battle against Google matters.

Update: A spokesperson with Google replied to my request for comment on the ICO’s investigation:

We’re happy to answer the ICO’s questions. We have always said that the project leaders did not want and did not use this payload data. Indeed, they never even looked at it.

While trying to put some distance between itself and the payload data, that doesn’t exactly give any indication about the nature of the payload data.

Australia’s Privacy Commissioner, Timonthy Pilgrim, is planning to reassess whether Google should be referred to the Australian Federal Police following the U.S. Federal Communications Commission report that found Google had essentially covered up the wi-fi spying habits of the Google Street View car in spite of Google previously saying it wasn’t really doing all that spying.

Google’s Street View cars typically drive around the world and photograph ground-level images so that users of Google Maps can take walking virtual tours of different areas. However, information was recently made public that not only were Google Street View cars secretly collecting personal information from unencrypted wi-fi networks like browser histories, emails, chats, passwords, and many other bits of personal data, but that supervisors at the company actually knew about the info-siphoning.

The FCC has fined Google for delaying and obstructing the agency’s investigation into the Google Maps spying on wi-fi practice but didn’t really do anything to Google for being a Big Brother creep and spying on people. More, the fine was a measly $25,000, which is barely a bite of bread crust for Google. Stay tuned to see what Australia’s government decides to dish out to Google (if anything).

Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division at Microsoft, detailed how the Family Safety software will work over at the Building Windows 8 blog. Microsoft is touting Family Safety as a good way to teach children about internet safety and limit the amount of time they spend playing video games. From the blog post:

Windows 8 gives you a “monitor first” approach, which provides informative activity reports for each child. As previously discussed on this blog, signing in to Windows 8 with a Microsoft account makes setup much simpler: just create a separate user account for each child and then check the box to turn on Family Safety. As soon as you do, you’ll receive a welcome email followed by weekly email reports summarizing your child’s computer activities. We expect you’ll find activity reports a great tool for teaching your kids about responsible computer use. Of course, you can also easily add restrictions by just clicking a link in the activity report. With the simplicity of activity reports, we believe more parents will adopt Family Safety, resulting in a safer computing environment for children.

The sentiment is nice, and the software looks well-designed for this purpose. But there is no getting around the fact that these Family Safety Reports leave children no shred of privacy on their Windows Accounts. Perhaps that is OK for most parents, who will responsibly monitor their child’s computer use with an understanding of childhood curiosity. However, there are parents who will use the software to keep their children trapped in a cloistered web of insular ideas. Parents who will punish children not for looking at porn, but for looking at ideas and world-views that contradict their own.

Also, while it’s true that children aren’t necessarily entitled to privacy from their parents, the feature could easily be abused to surreptitiously monitor the activities of an unsuspecting spouse or roommate. Like any tool, the Windows 8 family safety software can and will be used for both good and evil.

Take a look at the video demonstration fo the Family Safety features in Windows 8 and see for yourself just how easy the software makes it to monitor a user:

You’ve always heard these bogeyman stories about how you should always, at a minimum, secure your Wi-Fi network with a password. I’ve been hearing about it since the nascent days of Wi-Fi networks: using an unsecured network is basically the internet version of leaving the front door of your house open while you’re not home. You never know who could be lurking on your network, siphoning off the password to your email account or waiting for you to enter your credit card number to order that cat litter on Amazon. In short, it’s not safe; it’s the economic way to invite somebody to steal your personal information.

And yet, even as somebody who definitely falls into the category of Should Know Better, I still use unsecured Wi-Fi networks. I use them a lot, actually. Sometimes it can’t be helped, say if you’re at the public library or at a coffee house. Sometimes it can be helped. Me? I usually throw caution to the wind and never think about the risks whenever I need to use a public Wi-Fi network. I don’t think I’ve ever once paused before connecting to one and though, “Wait, on second thought, I shouldn’t do this because someone could swipe my information.” Even though I should know better, I ask myself, why do I still do it? I really don’t know. Sometimes I’m just that stupid, I guess.

Part of that illogical reasoning comes from the fact that I don’t do anything important, at least, anything important to petty cyberthieves. It’s naive, but I always think that if somebody really wants to steal my identity that badly, go ahead – I’m nobody of consequence and, really, I could certainly use the help paying back my student loans if anybody else wants to take on that debt with me.

My weird rationalization for suspending my disbelief only functions if I picture some meddling 26-year-old in the next room of the coffee shop eavesdropping on the Wi-Fi network. I can’t imagine anything more boring than watching the average person browse the internet. You’re not going to secure any confidential trade secrets of Wall Street or stumble upon somebody’s ingenious yet unpatented idea to solve the energy crisis. You probably wouldn’t even learn how to fold a winning paper airplane, let alone instructions on how to make a bomb. For that ostensible Wi-Fi spier, I don’t really see how anything on a general network could be of much use.

I wish I could say the same about the Google Street View Wi-Fi eavesdropping story. These are not middling twentysomethings in a coffee shop just being nosy. This a corporation for whom personal information is a mountain range of Martian blood diamonds. Google makes untold millions of dollars from crunching your personal information into advertising revenue. That kid in the coffee shop with the Jimmy Neutron haircut and an Ubuntu-powered PC might not have much use for what trivia I happen to be browsing in the middle of the afternoon, but the same can’t be said for Google.

That said, I’m not opposed to the general concept of Google having my information (we won’t get into the specifics regarding how long they hold onto it or any other aspects I do have a problem with). I realize that’s how I’m paying for some of their really great services, like Gmail, search (which is sometimes great), and Chrome, to name a few. If that’s what keeps those services top-rate and free, I think I can agree to the simple terms that they collect my data and use it for advertising.

I don’t mind that because it’s a mutual agreement wherein I know when they’re collecting it and what information they’re collecting. What I do mind is Google cat-burglaring people’s information by driving a vehicle around that’s siphoning off personal information from people using an unsecured Wi-Fi network. What I do mind is Google picking the locks on people’s browser security settings so that it can still track user data.

While both of these vampiric practices are irksome, the Street View/payload collecting issue irks me even more because Google has consistently misled the public about it, as if equivocating just enough will satisfy investigators and inquisitors so that they’ll all go away and Google won’t ever actually have to come clean about the what they’ve been up to. After saying it wasn’t collecting payload data but then it actually was, Google blamed it on a “rogue” engineer. After blaming it on said engineer, a Federal Communications Commission report shows that, in fact, several people at Google knew about the payload collection, therefore sinking the “rogue” engineer alibi. After all of that, nobody except Google still knows what data was collected in the Google Street View payload.

Given that kind of duplicity, no wonder so many people were cautious if not accusatory when Google Drive was launched last month: people aren’t so comfortable trusting Google these days.

Beyond all of this, Google already gets loads and loads of information via user consent. What is there to possibly gain from side-stepping security and possible legal protections to acquire even more? It’s like Google’s a data zombie that just can’t ever quite satiate that hunger for more brains.

As mentioned, Google’s bread and butter is information. I get that. I also realize that Google’s habit of holding its cards close to its vest in order to not reveal what it’s doing with the information is probably more indicative of the competitive industry than sincere malice (at least, I hope that Google doesn’t have some Skynet future planned for all of us). However, Google needs to scale back the intensity with which it goes after personal information of people on the internet.

It is not Google’s manifest destiny to pursue your personal data and it has done nothing to really earn any rights to it by misrepresenting its respect (or lack thereof) for privacy. If the company wants more personal data than it already has, it should be approaching the public directly instead of using some under-handed method that nobody knows about until after Google gets caught.

Sorry, Google, but when we shook hands and I agreed to use Google services in exchange for you to use my information, I didn’t realize you had your fingers crossed behind your back. Not cool.

In the end, there’s not really much else that can be done about the Google Street View eavesdropping. The FCC delivered its ceremonial slap on the wrist and Google still gets to keep the info it collected, so all in all, after a cost-benefit analysis at the day’s end, Google did pretty well for itself with the Street Car ordeal.

Google has this irresistible habit of making people feel like it’s Google’s world and we’re just lucky to live in it. Such an approach creates this incredible cognitive dissonance with users, myself included, because I think Google does do a lot of great stuff. But this isn’t a zero-sum game and doing a good thing here or there shouldn’t mean that Google gets some credit to spend on breaking bad.

But if this is indeed Google’s world, the lesson here is to protect your little corner of it and do common things like keep your Wi-Fi network secured. Anymore, if you’re savvy enough with encryption, you should probably limit what devices have permission to access the network, too. It sounds like it could be a pain for allowing visitors or neighbors access to your network, but hey – just assume that companies are spying on you and protect yourself according to your levels of fear. Better to be safe than sorry, really.

And that’s the beast stalking between the lines of every story that comes out about Google’s sponging up of payload data via Wi-Fi networks: better to be safe than sorry because, anymore, it’s obvious that random upstart hackers are no longer the biggest concern for whenever we’re using unsecured connections. They’re still a concern, sure, but now we have to worry that enormous tech companies like Google are out there spying on us, which could have much greater ramifications. And if Google’s already spying on us, that begs the question: just how many other huge corporate (or even government) entities are out there spying on us, too?

It’s probably a safe bet to assume all of them are.

According to the New York Times, the former investigator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, named the Google engineer as Marius Milner, a Wi-Fi specialist with a background in telecommunications. According to his LinkedIn page, which the Times was able to glimpse before it apparently went on lockdown, he described himself as, “I know more than I want to about Wi-Fi.”

Both Google and the Federal Trade Commissions had refused to name Milner, referring to him only as Engineer Doe.

A reporter for the Times apparently spoke to Milner on his doorstep, where he declined comment except for the cryptic defense against Google’s claims he acted as a rogue. Milner said that such an argument “requires putting a lot of dots together.” Beyond that, he declined comment and deferred the reporter to speak with his lawyer (who also declined to comment). Milner invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not talk during the FCC inquiry, which was why he was dubbed with the spooky moniker Engineer Due.

Milner had been with Google since 2003. It was around that time that he developed the program NetStumbler, which was a Windows program capable of detecting Wi-Fi networks, also known as wardriving.

The F.C.C. report notes that wardriving is “the practice of driving streets and using equipment to locate wireless local-area networks using Wi-Fi, such as wireless hot spots at coffee shops and home wireless networks.”

To design Street View’s code for locating wireless hot spots, the F.C.C. report states, “Google tapped Engineer Doe.”

The engineer — Mr. Milner’s LinkedIn entry says he has worked at Google’s YouTube subsidiary since November 2008 — wrote the code during the 20 percent of work time that the company gives employees to pursue ideas on their own, Google told the F.C.C., according to the agency’s full report.

Prior to today’s big reveal, privacy advocate Consumer Watchdog had requested from the U.S. Senate that he be granted immunity in exchange for a testimony about the Street View scandal. However, it’s hard to parse exactly what immunity he’d be granted since the FCC has already deemed that Google broke no laws other than obstructing the investigation, for which the company was fined $25,000. Additionally, the Department of Justice apparently already looked into the matter and concluded it would not “pursue a case for violation of the Wiretap Act.”

At any rate, it doesn’t sound like Milner isn’t going to easily let go of the fact that it sounds like Google may have tried to throw him under the bus when this story soured.

Worse, the investigation was dropped by the FCC. And the fine wasn’t because Google was eavesdropping on unsecured wi-fi networks, either – it was because of Google’s obstinate lack of cooperation with the FCC’s investigation.

While consumer advocacy groups have decried the FCC for taking a knee on Google’s wi-fi spying, the scandal officially debuted in the mainstream this past Wednesday when The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart assailed the government agency for producing a yawn in place of its Google investigation.

Stewart repeatedly expressed his trademark derision-enshrouded-in-sarcasm at the FCC for letting Google essentially get away with spying on people. Mocking the amount that Google was fined, Stewart described the fine as “less than what you would get for a particularly flashy NFL touchdown dance.”

Stewart’s final three words, delivered in such a way that was meant to clearly entertain, impute a bracing gravity of the entire situation when it comes to the government’s lack of interest or understanding in actually penalizing Google in a meaningful way: “We’re completely f—ed.”

The full video is below.

Of course, some have suggested that the FCC’s fine could step up the expected fines Google could receive from the Federal Trade Commission due to the company’s circumvention of the privacy settings of Safari users. Then again, The FCC’s lax punishment to Google could also swing the other way by setting the precedent of going easy on the search engine goliath when they don’t play by the rules.