Slashdot Mirror
Google Calls for International Privacy Standards
HairyNevus writes "The Washington Post has an article detailing Google's request for international privacy standards. Google is taking this matter all the way to the U.N., arguing that a hodge-podge of privacy law unnecessarily burdens Internet-based companies while also failing to protect consumers. Although Google is currently under investigation by the EU for its privacy practices, the company claims it has been a crusader for protecting consumer privacy. Google's privacy counsel Peter Fleischer called America's privacy laws 'too complex and too much of a patchwork,' and the European Union's laws 'too bureaucratic and inflexible.' The alternative? Something closer to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's framework which 'balances very carefully information privacy with business needs and commercial interests', according to Fleischer."
The problem with international standards for privacy is that some cultures have to give up the privacy rights, and right now, it is too early to attempt an international solution until we know locally what we want our rights to be.
We Americans might decry European standards and European "bureacracy", but they are Europe's to define. Similarly, whatever consensus we come to about privacy in the USA is our consensus. Until Europeans and Americans nail down what their rights and standards are, it makes little sense to try and adopt an international framework.
This is my sig.
More like the government controls the citizens.
will be defined as broadly (for Google, etc.) as possible. You won't recognize it after they're done, and you won't have any recourse because it's the "international standard" -- just like copyright restrictions.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Privacy information can easily be bought from Google
... anyway ...
FTA: "To target their advertising, both Google, which specializes in text ads, (...) collect information on which sites users visit."
As if it was just about visited sites, not about emails, searches, IMs, youTube, blogspot, orkut, user profile,
If you need data collected by Google just set up adwords for your needs (location, subject) redirecting to a brand new url. Where you can, for example, see if the redirected users have one of yours two-years-google-style cookie, and relate that cookie with profile data filled by users of your free-as-in-lunch services or with the e-mail addresses of webreaders of your crossite html embedded spam.
Later you can bomb those people's email addresses with specialized phishing/scams/advertisement.
And Google is still no evil, they just provide the circus which is distracting people from reality and hidden disclaimers.
"If we can't index it, it's private... until we figure out how to index it."
I won't go into the issues surrounding [Any Corporation] pushing for a change in not just national laws, but international laws. Suffice it to say that it isn't something I like.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Who do you trust more, Google or the government you live under? That is the root question.
There have been many recent breeches of information security in government and corporate computers. (esp. banking/credit/health sectors) Does a company like Google, who's bread and butter is information, have a naturally more trustable position from the end-user's perspective? Is it possible for Google to create a firewall to protect users from all data intrusion?
Google briefly had a market cap higher than Lockheed. They represent much more than just a search engine.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Nah. The government only has two real ways to control its citizenry: policing, and sabotage of the education system. The latter takes some time (years upon years) to take effect, so to affect any sort of short to mid term control there is only the option of sending cops as your henchmen to do your dirty work, either brutal suppression of speech, or just regular enforcing of asinine laws.
No, indeed, the government doesn't control its citizens, corporations do. Or rather, the two work in tandem, but it is the corporation that interacts directly with the population, rarely the government. Want to project a pro-war message? Movies, music, toys, books, all influenced by the government, but in the end produced by corporations.
We need a new word for this, because really it isn't the people controlling government controlling corporations, no, government and corporation are now more or less the same thing. Look at the executives in the American government, all of them in cahoots with all sorts of private enterprise. "Govcorp" is more like it. So in the end it is Govcorp controlling the citizens.
I've always taken Google at their word of "do no evil". For an American company, they do seem to really care about the consumer.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Now we shall see the slow opening of what's been happening for years. Corporations telling governments what to do, and getting it. Google is no different than any other corp, except they are laying their cards out on the table for all to see.
"Governments of the world...this is what we want you to do (because it will help our bottom line)", instead of the standard backroom deals.
So does anyone know what the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's framework privacy laws look like?
Anyone living in countries having these laws.
A description like 'balances very carefully information privacy with business needs and commercial interests' says pretty much nothing especially from someone who has a major interest in describing things in a positive way.
Can anyone tell me what the actual differences are between these laws and for example a specific EU country (as far as I know the laws differ pretty much in the EU from country to country still) or in the US (perhaps specific state laws)?
So basically what Google wants is for decision about laws to be further and further removed from small communities, and instead moved to national, and ultimately international, bodies.
When this happens, individual voters rightly believe that they've lost a meaningful say in the laws that govern them.
Corporate profits are not a good reason for us to give up our freedom of self-legislation.
Be careful what you wish for.
You might get it.
Multinational corporations want world government. One morality and one set of laws leaves more computing power for profits and data mining.
pot calls for black kettle!
# cat
If Google, a company whose main business model is to know everything about everyone, thinks that the European privacy laws are 'too bureaucratic and inflexible', the EU commission and the European parliament must be doing something right.
We need a new word for this, because really it isn't the people controlling government controlling corporations, no, government and corporation are now more or less the same thing.
Fascism comes to mind.
Infuriate left and right
From my perspective, as an individual, the EU Directive on data protection is one of the best things to come out of Brussels.
In my experience, it's really not particularly onerous, and very few customers will EVER make use of their rights to ask for information or have it deleted. If they do, assuming your system holds the information in a sensible way, it is fairly simple to comply. Apart from that the main restriction is that you can't actually buy and sell customer information unless the customers have consented to the usage. That part I can see Google hating - I always carefully consider whether or not I trust a company not to shaft me enough to let them share my data, and generally I'm far more protective about my e-mail address and phone than about my postal address.
I've never noticed the bureaucracy Google speak of, and I've dealt with privacy surrounding billing systems in multiple EU countries. What the EU regulations demand is good practice anyway for the most part, and apart from a few unscrupulous companies that would happily sell customer information without consent, most people really aren't affected much.
Should be read to mean, "in alignment with Google's mission to gather all the world's information and make it useful." Which is to say, your privacy is toast.
I dunno how they manage to say "Don't be evil," and "we care about your privacy."
Why should anyone trust Google with anything?
Because they say they do no evil?
They're a corporation, like any other, designed to make money. Your information is their bread and butter.
I don't particularly trust the government to keep my data safe, but the difference is corporate evil where they sell your information vs. government incompetence where they sometimes release it by accident.
I'll take incompetence over greed any day, thanks.
Mod parent up. One of the few things the EU does well is provide rules to protect personal data from abuse by corporations, by empowering the individual to control its dissemination (like having copyright to that data).
It really isn't much of a challenge to business - unless your business is collecting personally identifiable data and you don't want the subjects of that data the right to view it (for reasonable cost of processing), prohibit it from being disseminated, or have it purged. And if this is your business model, I look forward to your prosecution.
Similar, but not identical to what someone said above:
The problem with setting "International Standards" is that United States standards that have worked quite well tend to get watered down.
This has happened at least twice before, when copyrights and patent standards were "internationalized" to better match European standards. Neither of them now work anywhere near as well as they used to, before our government messed with them.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I am goddamned tired of our "representatives" giving away our rights to strangers.
Commercial interest should have nothing to do with my right to privacy. NOTHING.
The laws do differ in Europe, but even the least common denominator is considerably stronger than what the US has. (Obligatory Wikipedia citation for background)
The problem with this whole debate is that it is often presupposed that supporting commercial interests is a good enough reason to allow the arbitrary collection of personal data in the first place, and the question asked is only to what extent this should be regulated. I submit that by the time you get that far, you've already made an irrecoverable error: the only long-term safe position is that by default everyone has a basic right to privacy and collection of any personal data is illegal, and then you codify the exceptions to this principle. Unfortunately, even the EC legislation currently makes this mistake — which might explain the numerous unsavoury business practices based on involuntarily collection and profiling of personal data that are fast becoming commonplace here, and the consequent reduction in general quality of life for everyone affected (except those who own the businesses concerned, of course).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Google is feeling american privacy law harsh
In my country, unless you sue Google, they force you to follow american laws, which seems the only one they spontaneously obey.
Google have sales and development team here, they have servers and private network locally (which they don't say the purpose). Even both the offender and victim being local, when you ask something to Google, the only answer you get is:
"We are US based, fill a DMCA form and send to us by regular mail (in the US) or fax it" and wait about a week until that piece of paper is manually checked and only the content specifically mentioned on that mail is removed.
The copyright violation can be obvious as possible, it's usually the sole purpose of a user account, which is often named after it. But Google offer no help besides the "wait a week for each bit" method.
In that particular case american law fits Google desires of making copyright compliance more difficult.
From what I know from Google if they are calling an international standard on privacy is because they are not liking american privacy laws.
Other countries laws are not a problem since, until now, they usually don't obey them spontaneously.
AFIAK, even in Europe you still do not have the rights to demand that a company delete personal data about you or to prevent them from collecting it in the first place. You only have the right to see (for a fee) what they're holding about you, and to require them to correct it if it's wrong. Some countries impose more restrictions than this, but they're not universal. This is a major part of the privacy problem, IMHO.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If the owners of a business don't posess enough common sense and concept of decency to protect their users, then they don't deserve and should not be permitted to run the business - no matter their corporate might! As posted on our news page, all that is required is that web portals finally start putting the well being of their users ahead of their shareholders because the silent majority of people will soon tire of being fodder for generally worthless 'advertising' that often relies upon breaches of our most sacred asset. And another point, with all the amazing technology and intellectual capital out there, isn't it about time that the industry begins to devise alternative methods with which to monotise their services? Thinking never hurt anyone. /Rant over. Let the common sense begin!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
If Google is sick of having to tighten up their privacy policy for every local government that's stricter then their current policy, there's an easy solution. Find the state/country with the strictest privacy laws and make that your universal policy. I imagine the amount of places you'd have to modify it for local laws (such as laws that require you to retain data longer then your new policy says) will be significantly less and it will make for greater privacy for users all around.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Yes, folks, because that's where you go when you REALLY just HAVE to get it DONE!
Google calling for privacy. GOOGLE!!! The guys who are keeping a huge data mine on anyone who uses their services...
This is as funny as "Don't be evil"! Google just spews propaganda, and techies lap it up like good little doggies. And as long as they can entertain the masses with Microsoft execs throwing chairs and phony gestures to the FOSSie MS-hater community, they can keep growing that data mine bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Oh, and let's not forget about how much help they are giving to China's efforts to suppress their citizenry!
Don't be evil... soothing words for gullible sheep!
http://www.blackboxsearch/
Google and privacy laws do not mix. It does seem rather odd that Google is pushing this. With all the poor publicity towards Google caused by privacy advocates this may be an attempt to save face. Google just wants to protect all the data they collect on individuals from getting into the hands of others who might make a profit from it without first paying Google! Btw who do they think they are? :)
You are my tinfoil hat god.
And no... that's not sarcasm.
That's certainly not true in Slovenia (which is a part of EU). As a company you have a right to collect only data that you actually need and get to keep parts that you need for as long as you have to and not any longer.
You certainly have to delete personal data when request by owner in reasonable amount of time unless you have legal obligations to keep it.
I am fairly certain that you are suffering from schizophrenia, or another psychotic disorder.