[whackberry]

Sure, but what is the parallel here?

The paparazzi make a living from those photos, so there is a reason for them to be out there doing that(not saying I agree, just saying there's a reason for it).

What is Google doing driving around collecting personal data for? Google is a search engine with several great products around it. WTF are they driving around collecting data for? See? It doesn't make any sense, this is plain creepy.

[derefr]

...because Google Maps has backup-geolocation through a database of wi-fi access point ID/GPS-pair mappings, which can only be discovered by exactly this wardriving process? It's kind of the central point of the story, here.