Google possesses massive amounts of information on users of its
search engine, email, mapping and other internet-based tools, and
has been the subject of criticism in Europe for keeping that
information for too long.
US law is typically less stringent on privacy concerns than that
in Europe, but Google has backed the idea of a national, or
federal, privacy law, according to Reuters. The news agency said
that the company wrote to Republican member of Congress Joe Barton
to express support for a national law.
"Google supports the adoption of a comprehensive federal privacy
law that would accomplish several goals such as building consumer
trust and protections; creating a uniform framework for privacy,
which would create consistent levels of privacy from one
jurisdiction to another; and putting penalties in place to punish
and dissuade bad actors," said Google's chief lobbyist Alan
Davidson in the letter.
Privacy activists have long worried about the amount of
information Google collects and the length of time for which it is
stored, and concerns have become more focused since the company
acquired online advertising company DoubleClick, the market leader
in the online display advertising market.
Barton, a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee of
the House of Representatives, had written to Google to ask it about
its privacy policies, and the backing for a privacy law came in
Google's reply.
A number of US states including technology centres California
and New York already have state privacy laws.
Google has been under pressure in recent days to place a link to
its privacy policy on its homepage. A group of privacy and consumer
activist bodies wrote to the company last week to urge it to
publish a link to its policy on its homepage, but the company said
it would not be changing the page.
Last July Google's privacy chief Peter Fleischer told OUT-LAW
that the policy was easy to find and did not need to be on the
front page.
"Google has a very sparse homepage. It’s one of the things that
we’re very proud about," he told OUT-LAW Radio. "It’s kind of clean
and zen-like. Last I counted I think we had something like 35 words
on our homepage. On ours with only 35 words, we had to keep it very
sparse. Now of course we’re a search engine, so anybody who wants
to see our privacy policy can type 'Google privacy policy' and,
trust me, it will come up as result number one. It’s not hard to
find. We’re a search company. We don’t believe in pushing things
into people’s face. We keep it easy and simple to find."
Google has also faced criticism from European privacy regulators
who claim that the company's retention of search log data for up to
18 months breaches data protection regulations. Google has claimed
that it is bound by the European Union's data retention laws, but
privacy watchdogs counter that those apply to telecoms service
providers and not to websites.
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