1. I clearly said I was being snarky and there was a lot more in what I wrote than a single snarky sentence.
2. I have APs that do collect and store data about nearby wifi stations and transmission patterns as part of a system that improved wireless throughput.
3. What difference does it make if it is being stored?
> 2. I have APs that do collect and store data about nearby wifi stations and transmission patterns as part of a system that improved wireless throughput.
If it's just nearby ones then that's much less of a problem.
> 3. What difference does it make if it is being stored?
Imagine saying that about someone else's telephone call...
Listening out for interference is not at all the same as siphoning up information.
Speaking of strawmen..."siphoning up?" We are talking about a database of wifi beacons (SSID/BSSID) and GPS coordinates for where the beacons were received. It is no different from a database of street addresses and corresponding GPS coordinates. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for SSIDs or wifi beacons -- everyone knows they can see their neighbor's SSIDs.
You seem to be saying that if an AP stores information about other "nearby" APs there is no problem. What if I am operating thousands of APs across a broad geographic region using a centrally managed AP controller? That is a common practice for large organizations and that is exactly the setting where you see APs collecting and storing information about other wifi stations. Is that not a large enough scale to be a concern? I have to wonder at what point you are drawing the line here. What is an unacceptable scale?
"Street address" refers to the address of an individual home or building here in the US. How is being a matter of public record relevant here? Are you suggesting that there is nothing wrong with a company that queries public records across thousands of municipalities to build a unified database? In any case, that something is a matter of public record is irrelevant because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy to begin with. Even if there were no public records to query, anyone could go out and start creating a map of any town, recording specific details of the locations of any structures they believe to be relevant to their map. It is relatively common to do so because of the inaccuracies and missing information in most public records (e.g. people often make unauthorized modifications to properties, fail to file the proper paperwork after otherwise legal work is completed, report incorrect information, etc.) and it is done at national or even global scale.
I do not see how SSIDs are in different in any meaningful way. We are literally talking about building a map -- a map that includes the locations of SSIDs, to be used as a kind of landmark, no different from a map that includes other landmarks (e.g. "the house with the red siding") that could conceivably be used to help a person identify their position on the map. There is zero expectation of privacy for SSIDs, just like there is zero expectation of privacy for the exterior of your home.
Is there any specific objection beyond, "This is happening at a large scale?"
