Slashdot Mirror
EU Questions Google Privacy Policy
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is running a piece noting that the EU is scrutinizing Google's privacy policy this month. The company's policy of keeping search information on their servers for up to two years may be violating EU privacy laws. A data protection group that advises the European Union has written to the search giant to express concerns. The EU has a wide range of privacy protections that set limits to what information corporations may collect and what they may or may not do with it. In the US on the other hand privacy laws generally cover government actions while the business sector remains largely unregulated. Is it perhaps time to follow the European example and extend privacy laws to include corporations?"
The important difference in this is that the data stored by ISP's is for law enforcement purposes and requires a court order for access. There are also very strict regulations about who/why/when can access and how to log that access. Google and other companies store and use data to make profit with very little regulation.