PARIS — The French data protection authority said on Tuesday that Google’s new privacy policy appeared to violate European Union law.
Google announced the new policy last month, billing it as a way to
streamline and simplify the privacy practices it employed worldwide
across about 60 different online services, and to introduce greater
clarity for users.
But the French privacy agency, the National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties, said in a letter
to Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, that the
proposed policy was murky in the details of how the company would use
private data. Google and other Internet companies gather personal
information in an effort to build anonymous profiles of users, helping
them to sell advertising.
“Rather than promoting transparency, the terms of the new policy and the
fact that Google claims publicly that it will combine data across
services raises fears about Google’s actual practices,” the letter from
the French privacy agency, known as CNIL, said. “Our preliminary
investigation shows that it is extremely difficult to know exactly which
data is combined between which services for which purposes, even for
trained privacy professionals.”
The warning to Google carries potential implications for other European
Union countries, because in this case the French regulator was acting at
the request of an advisory panel to the European Commission,
which asked the French agency to conduct an initial assessment of the
Google privacy changes. The new rules were set to come into effect on
Thursday.
Meanwhile, the commission is in the process of overhauling its privacy
rules to bring them in line with the era of the Internet and cloud
computing. The commissioner in charge of privacy, Viviane Reding, has
called for streamlined privacy rules, which currently vary widely across
the European Union, with separate enforcement bodies like the French
privacy agency overseeing national guidelines.
Google is also facing an antitrust investigation in Brussels, where the
European Commission is scrutinizing its dominant position in Internet
search. The privacy policies of individual Google services, especially
its StreetView mapping feature, have also been investigated in a number
of European Union countries.
Ms. Reding had already asked Google to delay adoption of the new privacy
policy while regulators assessed its compatibility with European Union
law. But the company reiterated on Tuesday that it had no intention of
doing so.
“We are confident that our new simple, clear and transparent privacy
policy respects all European data protection laws and principles,” Peter
Fleischer, Google’s chief privacy counsel, wrote in a letter to the
French privacy agency. He said the company had tried unsuccessfully to
meet with the agency to discuss the changes.
“Like all companies, we have struggled with the conundrum of how to
pursue both of the CNIL’s recommendations: How to ‘streamline and
simplify’ our privacy policies, while at the same time providing
‘comprehensive information’ to our users,” Mr. Fleischer’s letter
states.
The French privacy agency said in its letter that it would send Google a
“full questionnaire” about its privacy policies by mid-March.
In addition to issuing warnings, the French privacy agency has the power
to fine companies up to 300,000 euros ($400,000) for privacy breaches
in France. It can also seek court orders to try to stop companies from
engaging in practices that are deemed to violate data protection laws.
Enforcement in other European countries would be up to individual data
protection authorities.
Google’s new privacy policy applies to services like the YouTube online video platform, the Android
mobile phone software and the Google search engine. Users were notified
of the changes via e-mail and postings on the relevant sites, among
other methods.
The proposed changes have also attracted scrutiny in the United States,
where privacy advocates have urged Congress to look into the new policy.
Big Brother Watch, a British privacy advocate, published a study on
Tuesday that said only 12 percent of Google users had read the new
policy. Forty-seven percent were unaware of the changes, the study
showed.
“Google is putting advertisers’ interests before user privacy and should
not be rushing ahead before the public understand what the changes will
mean,” the group said in a statement posted on its Web site.
http://www.nytimes.com
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