Concerns about user privacy online have been expressed for years. Many companies have been known to share information about individuals (sometimes in aggregate) with third parties, with or without the consent of the owners. Google and Facebook made headlines because of how they have been handling the privacy of their users recently.
For Google, it was their recent call for new international standards on the collection and use of consumer data that attracted attention. The search engine giant did this in the person of Peter Fleischer, the company's global privacy counsel. Fleischer addressed a U.N. audience in Strasbourg, France, with the complaint that the current international privacy laws help neither businesses nor consumers. An international body, he argued, ought to come up with standards that countries around the world could draw from to suit their own needs.
"The ultimate goal should be to create minimum standards of privacy protection that meet the expectations and demands of consumers, businesses and governments," Fleischer said in his speech. If these words sound strange or worrying coming from a Google representative, it's no wonder. The search engine giant has had a number of run-ins with privacy advocates in the past.
Most recently, its not-quite-completed purchase of DoubleClick has been the biggest cause for concern. DoubleClick is an online advertising broker. Both Google and DoubleClick collect information about which sites users visit, often using cookies for tracking purposes. Many online privacy advocates find the idea of having that much consumer data in the hands of one company to be unsettling, to say the least. The European Union is reportedly concerned enough to be investigating Google's privacy practices.
Needless to say, some online privacy advocates find Google's arguing for international privacy standards suspicious. "Google, under investigation for violating global privacy standards, is calling for international privacy standards," observed Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It's somewhat like someone being caught for speeding saying there should be a public policy to regulate speeding."
Someone caught for speeding who says that they want a policy in place to regulate speeding would be expected to suggest laws that are more lenient than the current standards. Not surprisingly, critics have accused Google of this approach. Fleischer argued for a privacy framework similar to the one developed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. He claimed that it "balances very carefully information privacy with business needs and commercial interests."
Rotenberg does not believe this is a suitable approach. "The APEC guidelines are far below what Google would be expected to do in Europe or the United States," he pointed out. He thinks the guidelines "don't address the critical problem of limiting data collection, which is the key point in the dispute over Google's business practices."
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