I cried all the way to the bank - Liberace
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Privacy chiefs want Google to make changes
A GROUP of national privacy and data protection organisations have written to Google, expressing their disappointment at its business practices and asking it to make changes.
Unhappy with the ways that Google has been doing things, like launching social networking applications and taking photographs of people's houses for anyone to view online, the signers asked it to consider "fundamental privacy principles."
The signatures include those of the UK's Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, and eight others, including their peers from Israel, Spain, and New Zealand.
Commenting on Google's most recent outrage when it launched Buzz, they wrote this in a letter (PDF) to Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, "We are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world's citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications."
Buzz isn't the only application to sting Google users, either, and the privacy chiefs added that Google launched Street View, in some countries, "without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws and cultural norms."
Frankly, that us the sort of behaviour we would expect to see the Chinese government get up to. Still, according to the letter writers Google needs to make onlly a few changes to the way it works in order to respect privacy, starting with actually bothering to respect it in the first place.
"We therefore call on you, like all organisations entrusted with people's personal information, to incorporate fundamental privacy principles directly into the design of new online services."
Other things that any sensible data protection lawyer would warn his client to take into consideration include the suggestions that Google provide information about how any collected information might be used, that it offer privacy-protective default settings, and that it ensure that its privacy controls are easy to use.
Google was very vocal on the subject of Internet freedom this morning, so we are confident that it will respond to these suggestions soon. µ
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The English GOVERNMENT has implemented the CCTV network.
No English CITIZEN appreciates it any more than they appreciate Street View.
The difference is in the fact that Street View can be beaten down because it is the brainchild of a private corporation, whereas the CCTV network cannot be beaten down because it is for government tax purposes.
And, as we all well know, when push comes to shove, taxation trumps individual liberties every time.
So the English didn't like Google's street view and some suburbs even had their streets removed, yet the English Government has implemented one of the largest CCTV networks, of all developed countries, to monitor its citizens 24/7.
The publically funded spy network has over 10000 CCTV cameras in London alone, and yet they''l still complain about a static image of a street or house in Google's streetview.
some optimistic idealists complaining that all the means for a police state dystopia are being put in place. -- And when we (go_ogle) are doing so much good (for the NSA).