Google Privacy Director Alma Whitten Leaving

Gunkerty Jeb writes "Alma Whitten, the director of privacy at Google, is stepping down from that role and leaves behind her a complicated legacy in regards to user privacy. ... Whitten has been at Google for about 10 years, and while she has been the main public face of the company's product privacy efforts in the last couple of years, she has been involved in engineering privacy initiatives for even longer. Before becoming the privacy lead for products and engineering in 2010 in the aftermath of the Google Street View WiFi controversy, Whitten had been in charge of privacy for the company's engineering teams. During that time, she was involved in the company's public effort to fight the idea that IP addresses can be considered personally identifiable information."

Google + Privacy?

[peppepz]

When we talk about the company's "privacy efforts", we're talking about them fighting privacy?

Panopticlick / Google can track you quite well.

[girlinatrainingbra]

Re:

Whitten had been in charge of privacy for the company's engineering teams. During that time, she was involved in the company's public effort to fight the idea that IP addresses can be considered personally identifiable information

Well, on the one hand, the idea that IP addresses are not personally identifiable information is of benefit to the masses when arguing against RIAA/MPAA attacks saying "this IP address downloaded XYZ, thus the current user of said IP address is responsible", because an IP address is not a personal identifier.
.
On the other hand, google can then say that they keep track of IP addresses and other information which combine to become personally identifying information.
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See the EFF's site Panopticlick [eff.org] to see the huge amount of identifiable information your web-browsing leaves behind, especially if you have javascript enabled. If google argues that your IP addy isn't personally identifiable info, then they can't get in any trouble for keeping track of it, even though in combination with your "user agent string" and the leaked browser information, they certainly can keep track of you.

Surely it's not still April 1st somewhere?

[tehcyder]

"Director of privacy at Google" is the only funny April Fool's joke on slashdot this year.

Re:Google + Privacy?

[JWSmythe]

    No, just like a street address, it does not identify you. It does lead straight to your home though. One requires someone to drive to your house. The other requires a LEO call to the ISP to ask for the address to drive to your house.

    It doesn't identify *you*. Just like you can have your mail delivered to a friend, neighbor or PO box, *you* are linked to it. It still leads back to you, no matter how many layers of distractions are involved.

  Your IP or mailing address cannot be used to prosecute. They can be used to point investigators towards who to prosecute.