Google Calls for International Privacy Standards 75
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."
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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 t
Re:priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Fascism comes to mind.
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Google can afford to respect local law for now (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The problem with international standards for privacy is that some cultures have to give up the privacy rights
Sorry, but I disagree. If you think carefully, I believe you'll realise there is another remarkably simple solution, and one that is almost certainly in the interests of private citizens everywhere at that. It's just not the solution Google wants.
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We really do need to streamline privacy standards and make them more compatible across international boundaries. Ten years ago people were not concerned about a user in country A running an app on a server in country B which stores his personal data in country C, but today that's a reality. If the laws were similar enough, one could do that sort of thing without too many prob
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What, follow the union of laws from both countries, which could be self-contradictory and make doing any business at all impossible?
They could be contradictory. But realistically, it would be relatively easy to achieve harmony on the basis that the default position was everyone having privacy and no personal data collection being allowed without explicit consent, and then codifying some reasonable exceptions. Much bigger differences have been worked around when building international agreements in the past.
The only realistic down-side to harmonising in this way is that a lot of companies whose business models are based on collecting
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They could be contradictory. But realistically, it would be relatively easy to achieve harmony on the basis that the default position was everyone having privacy and no personal data collection being allowed without explicit consent, and then codifying some reasonable exceptions.
If its relatively easy, please explain how you would maintain SOX [wikipedia.org] or ISO 9001 [wikipedia.org] compliance while not keeping any personally identifiable records of your customers. It's way more difficult than you make it out to be. Also, the exceptions-only approach sounds like outlawing all international trade and then enabling it on a product-by-product basis; That seems to give the government way more control than they ought to have.
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You're overstating the case by a large margin. For one thing, I didn't say you couldn't keep any personal data, I just said that was the only safe default and it is the reasonable exceptions that should be spelt out explicitly.
For example, it would certainly be reasonable to codify a general exception that said businesses could store personal data necessary to administer a legitimate transaction with a customer, for as long as is necessary to conduct that transaction. However, it is not necessary for a bu
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I have long suggested that removing anonymity on the Internet might be a step forward. In practical terms, it offers little protection of free speech in the face of an oppressive government anyway, and supporting such speech is the major argument in favour of it. Meanwhile, all laws basically rely on being able to hold people accountable for their actions. If you allow effectively anonymous use of the Internet, then you allow anyone to break the law without responsibility. And thus we have everything from s
Google is feelling american privacy law harsh (Score:2)
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
Irony (Score:1, Interesting)
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
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still no problem about giving up theose pesky bloggers/journalists to the govenment when asked eh.
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Of course each country should rule here - however the problem is that we then get the trickle down effect.
Just like in copyright where US extended copyright, then pressured the EU and they extended copyright the same thing has happened wrt privacy and will continue.
Just like the doha WTO negotiation rounds where about who to take the blame (EU got the blame this time around) rather then to find a solution for free and fair trade.
Case in point would be the human rights whi
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There are governments that have misgivings about the WWW itself. Considering convenience issues for an American corporation may have an element of humor that we in the USA fail to appreciate.
I think it is naive for Google to think that countries who can't reach a consensus on biological weapons or the disposal of hazardous waste will seriously consider this privacy request.
Google wants all the data they can get-- and have profited handsomely from it. No
"Privacy" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Privacy information easily bought from Google (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Privacy information can easily be bought from Google
FTA: "To target their advertising, both Google, which specializes in text ads, (...) collect information on which sites users visit."
Those two sentences have nothing to do with each other. My government collects a lot of taxes too, but that doesn't mean I can easily access the funds. If you've got evidence they sell it, show it. Otherwise stop FUDing. There's enough wrong today with user privacy that you don't have to make stuff up.
As if it was just about visited sites, not about emails, searches, IMs, youTube, blogspot, orkut, user profile, ... anyway ...
Yes, google has an assload of information, which can be a little scary. Then again, so does my bank, credit card company, and health insurance company. Medical privacy works pretty well because we have
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Did you ever visit DoubleClick websiste? Probably not, but if you don't delete your cookies as said, you probably have one of them on your machine.
You don't need to "visit site B" as you said, all you need is to open a html page (a site or webmail) that have embedded requests to site B.
Then you're tagged with a cookie from B.
B can sponsor a free-as-in-lunch service and get pr
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I've created several email addreses for myself through my ISPs and keep them tightly focused on who gets them. Each company gets it's own email address.
On my personal account after 2+ weeks of sending and receiving email only with friends with GMail accounts, I started to receive my first spam. This is after several month of spamlessness. Earlier emails were to the same people plus some with other accounts. I've never registered that email address with any compan
Google's New Privacy Standard (Score:5, Funny)
I worry (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Well in this particular case, I agree that that's what Google is pushing for. However, in my experience the opposite is generally true - see for example copyright laws.
I think in the case of businesses pushing for harmonisation of laws it would be more generally true to say that push to harmonise in the direction that most benefits them. Hence the US and WTO pushing for companies to si
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On the other hand, the public's right to use the expressions as they wish became w
Trust (Score:2, Interesting)
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. Th
Re:Trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Who do you trust more, Google or the government you live under? That is the root question.
My government, without hesitation.
And believe me, that's really saying something.
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Well that's good to hear - I was afraid those things were going out of style [chevalpower.com]!
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The circus is finally out in public (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
What is the difference? (Score:2)
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 pret
European data protection framework (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org])
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 irrecoverab
Google vs. democracy? (Score:2)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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What Google wants is a standard they can apply universally rather than having to worry about breaking the law when someone in a very privacy-protective country accesses a system designed for a region with less-stringent requirements.
This is obvious, and people are overreacting.
No shit it's obvious, which is exactly why people are "overreacting".
Here are the only possible scenarios:
A) International standards are made consistent with the countries that have the highest levels of privacy protection
B) International standards are made consistent with the countries that have the lowest levels of privacy protection
C) International standards are set somewhere between A & B
Now whatever answer you pick, countries are going to get screwed:
A) Low standard countries have to pay lots of m
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When you have an international standard, everything you need to do is clear and straightforward
We know that because it's written in ISO Standard Document 42332/J, Chapter 6, subsection 3, paragraph 2.
Easy setups aside, so what if it's clear and straightforward? If the standard says "bend over" that's very clear and straightforward. If the standard says "everybody has to do things the same way", that's very clear and straightforward.
So, Google, you want it easy. Well, sorry Google, that's Sloth.
Dear Google, (Score:2)
You might get it.
In other news: (Score:1)
That sounds like praise for European privacy laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That sounds like praise for European privacy la (Score:2)
So the EU privacy regulation is too bureaucratic.. (Score:2)
Re:So the EU privacy regulation is too bureaucrati (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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You certainly have to delete personal data when request by owner in reasonable amount of time unless you have legal obligations to keep it.
Bad Precedent Already Set (Score:1)
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 "repre
What the hell.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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B*llocks! Why don't they set their OWN rules! (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy to harmonize themselves (Score:2)
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Google is taking this matter all the way to the UN (Score:1)
google == aol: get protection (Score:1)