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Google Faces Privacy Audits For Next 20 Years
Hugh Pickens writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Google has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over Buzz, a social blogging service the company introduced through Gmail last year. The deal will require that Google have regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. Buzz drew heavy criticism at launch in February 2010 for a glaring privacy flaw. When users turned it on, it suggested people to follow based on their Gmail contacts list and their most frequent email partners. 'Although Google led Gmail users to believe that they could choose whether or not they wanted to join the network, the options for declining or leaving the social network were ineffective,' says the FTC. Along with the 20 year oversight, the settlement also says that Google is barred from misrepresenting privacy or confidentiality of the user information it collects, Google must obtain user consent before sharing their information with third parties if it changes its privacy policy, and Google must establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program."
Facebook? Hello?
Not cool for so long now (Google). But, so is my country (Croatia).
I'd suggest the same with facebook too. I'm not too sure the legality of presenting 12 year old with changes to user agreements, misleading games that collect your info, etc.
At least they are not as evil. The problems with Google Buzz were quite obvious.
This basically amounts to "now don't you do that again, Google!" I don't know why I'm constantly surprised by how infective our corporate oversite is.
Honestly, these kinds of things should be mandatory for any large company with that much personal information. Regular independent audits? Sounds like the kind of oversight we need. Can't lie about how private your info is? Sounds like something that should be a law. Need to get consent again after changing the terms? Again, I'm surprised you could get away with it before.
Now let's just get these things applied everywhere else like Google. Facebook, for one, deserves even more oversight.
Does that mean that companies that aren't Google are not barred from misrepresenting privacy or condientiality of the user information they collect? That seems like it should be a law for everyone. Similarly for the requirement to get user consent if it changes its privacy policy.
A dupe - with both articles appearing on the slashdot front page at the same time!
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/30/1517238/Google-Agrees-To-Biennial-Privacy-Reviews
Not fair. Google's been a lot better at protecting info than Zuckerberg's famous pig.
...how about getting our own GOVERNMENT to follow these guidelines? I'd have a hard time following an edict by someone who won't follow it themselves.
I know, it's slashdot, but don't dupes usually wait a day or a week before getting posted?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/30/1517238/Google-Agrees-To-Biennial-Privacy-Reviews
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
Five years and then a checkup now and again, sure, but 20 years is /forever/, even in the non-technical space.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
This seems a little excessive to me. They recognized the problem, and took care of it, fairly quick. They didn't realize they had a problem on launch. It seems to MY eyes, that Google TRIES to do the right thing. Unlike Facebook, that does the wrong thing, until OVERWHELMING complaints roll things back. The privacy issues caused by the Buzz launch seemed to not big a big deal, except for a few outliers.
What's amazing to me is that google, being not quite 13 years old, is being slapped with requirements that will extend for 20 years. Who knows, by then they could be a completely different company.
Obvious to you, obvious to me, apparently not obvious to google.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The soldier who saw everything twice nodded weakly and sank
back on his bed. Yossarian nodded weakly too, eyeing his talented
roomate with great humility and admiration. He knew he was in the
presence of a master. His talented roomate was obviously a person to
be studied and emulated. During the night, his talented roomate died,
and Yossarian decided that he had followed him far enough.
'I see everything once!' he cried quickly.
-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
from the wrath of; god? chosen ones? aliens? terrorists? queers? the clergy? each other? tag team? .5 billion, here we come....
And that's not give them your data to begin with. Anything else and it's out of your hands: they might or might not act reasonably, and there's fuckall you can do about it either way.
That means: no using google service. Don't run their tracker scripts. No gmail.
There are plenty of alternatives out there without the privacy problems. If you don't want your every personal detail to be fodder for data miners, *don't bloody give it to them*. It's the only way to be sure.
Also, privacy gets worse when a single entity aggregates a large amount of separate kinds of data. Google has been doing this in spades.
It amazes me that in 2011, anyone is still willingly giving their personal data over to internet data miners. In 2000 I might have understood it for general lack of awareness about the extent of it. But it's been the lead story on bloody CNN on many occasions. It isn't a mystery now to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the last decade.
Putting some legal blinders on google only slows the tide a tiny bit. The only way to stop it is to stop running trackers, stop downloading web bugs, stop giving all your personal data to sites that sell it on down the stream.
Evil or not, it's pretty cool to see the US Government siding with consumer privacy against a major corporation. Is this a sign of an attitude change, or merely a sign that Google is (relatively) new and hasn't figured out who they need to bribe yet?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
For screwing up so bad. There's yet the wireless sniffing incident to deal with.
.... what would you expect from someone who took on the culture of those companies.
Thank you for screwing up the ethics of a company that had maintained acceptable ethics for a long time and having it obliged to something that no other company is put through.
And about you, good riddance.
sun, apple, oracle
Read radical news here
I can't see any reason this shouldn't apply to all companies.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
I have a feeling they're retaining a lot more unnecessary information than google.
we don't think any of our friends & neighbors want to hurt god or america, but without sneaking around, how will we know? scary to think how many of our (former?) friends & neighbors from all over the world really just want to kill us, even though they say they just want to try having their life, without our unrefusable help? even the still unproven dead could come back to cause more trouble? shooters+targets+buyers+sellers = .5 billion? this doesn't include possible religious aliens, euganatics, the deities themselves etc... what a spectacle? almost biblical?
Smack their knuckles with a ruler for good measure
Why? Overpunishment is just as unproductive when applied to businesses as it is to poor, desperate saps. And "now don't you do that again, Google!" is a reasonable response when you have, as in this case, a reasonable expectation that Google indeed won't do it again.
slashdot = stagnated
Yes, and it will be so easy enforce and verify.. What they got caught with so far amounts maybe to one one thousandth of what they have. This is a silly distraction. You will not have privacy on a networked computer.. never...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Conservatives are always comprehensive
Liberals are always comprehensive
Bipartisanship is comprehensive
Def: Comprehensive ! "When you care enough to use four syllables and never follow through"
From the article:
"The proposed settlement bars Google from misrepresenting the privacy or confidentiality of individualsâ(TM) information or misrepresenting compliance with the U.S.-E.U Safe Harbor or other privacy, security, or compliance programs."
I am confused. The article is from the FTC itself, so it seems unlikely that they got this part wrong.
Is this really saying that companies are not, by default, barred from misrepresenting their handling of individuals' information?
That seems so strikingly wrong that I am having a hard time believing that I am reading it correctly.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
My conclusion after reading this. They didn't pay enough on lobbyists. This of course is scary once you see how much they already pay for lobbying and how fast its grown. Here's the question I pose to you. Is Google, the company of do no evil, doing evil by putting this many resources towards these efforts or is that just par for the course when you get that big?
Do less evil....
(meant to poke fun - I actually like Google)
Place nail here >+
Evil or not, it's pretty cool to see the US Government siding with consumer privacy against a major corporation. Is this a sign of an attitude change, or merely a sign that Google is (relatively) new and hasn't figured out who they need to bribe yet?
Or its just a cover for a secret agreement to feed everything they collect to a bunch of three letter agencies bypassing all judicial oversight.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'm going to side with the argument that Google hasn't paid them enough or given them what they wanted.
The US Government isn't exactly a huge privacy advocate. Oh, unless it pertains to their own bullshit.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
I am not sure its a sound expansion of FTC powers to start conducting privacy audits of companies. If they are going to do it though Google is really the least of my concerns. I'd like to see Financials, Insurers, Cellular Carriers, and Utilities audited more so than Google. Google is going to use the information they have on me to try and market stuff to me and of course there is a risk it could get leaker. Those other guys are all in a position to do things of much greater consequence to my life with that same data and if anything more likely to leak it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This is almost a false dichotomy like the current US political party situation.
Trying to stay even handed, I absolutely agree that Google is *one of* the companies that needs privacy oversight.
But then one of the Google SuperLawyers needs to turn this around into a precedent, so that the other 10 (more?) companies that need oversight get it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You mean meet the moronic researcher whose "deep investigation" couldn't notice that the false positive given by his antivirus hit a windows localization folder and just test the file in question on a different scanner?
"Google has the only government-reviewed privacy and security policy."