SMH joins the Google privacy fight – a month late

Here’s a very odd thing. Remember how, just over a month ago, Google admitted that its Streetview cars had also been capturing wifi data?  

Media minister Stephen Conroy got quite cross about it three weeks ago.

Yesterday, for no immediately apparent reason, the Sydney Morning Herald joined the fray, with an editorial headlined “Google’s dirty secret”, opining that the search giant “has been caught out badly”.

Oddly, the editorial does not appear online, although the one printed above it, on another topic, does.

But I’m mystified why they should run the piece now, when the paper appeared to report no new developments.

An uncharitable person, might wonder if it was an old item somehow left in the system from a month before.

But surely there’s a better explanation than that?

Tim Burrowes