EU to Investigate Passport Privacy Concerns

mvdwege writes: "Well, it appears that the old fight between the US and the EU over privacy regulations is about to enter a second round. In response to a letter by a Member of the European Parliament, the Commission has stated that it will start investigating Microsofts possible breach of the EU privacy regulations. The Register has a nice summary."

Is anyone stupid enough

[Wolfier]

to think MS will not use the personal info for marketing purposes? I mean, MS is more a marketing company than a software company anyway!

They won't do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the government here in the U.S., they'll whine for a while to show people that they're doing something to protect them. Then, Microsoft will send in the high priced lawyers and lobbyists. Europe, fearing losing Microsoft business will slap them on the wrist, and business will go on as usual.

Government gets their money, plus they look like their doing something, meanwhile Microsoft gets their money, and looks like they're sorry.

Re:You Know You've Lost When...

[Gabey]

Just because Word "happens to be the best word processor available" (a questionable claim, of course), doesn't mean it had to be saved in Word format. They could've saved it in RTF or HTML...

Not that I'm really advocating using Office's horrible HTML, but, the point is that there's other options.

Re:You Know You've Lost When...

[macshit]

... and as we all know, MS Word is an entirely unreadable format. Come on... openoffice does a fine job at readin Word files, for instance - they're not perfect filters, but for reading a document you don't need the layout to be 100% perfect do you?

`Fine job'? The latest time I needed to view a word document, it happened to be written in Japanese, and used tables. Now, openoffice claims to support Japanese, but in this case, only managed to display about 1% of the text correctly. 1%!

Morever, it's perfectly reasonable to hold a government body to higher standards than an average company -- the government is supposed to think about more than just convenience (read the recent letter from the Peruvian congressman for a more eloquent take on this). There are many more universal formats out there, which at least are documented well enough so that people can write proper viewers for them (e.g., PDF, RTF, HTML, text files...).

[If there's a better way to view word files without word, I'd appreciate some pointers, incidentally. Antiword and openoffice seem to do OK on simple docs, but ...]

Personal Data Need to be Regulated

[guttentag]

The government needs to start treating companies that collect sensitive consumer information like banks. They are in fact banks of valuable information that must be protected and regulated.

Banks and financial institutions are subject to strict federal regulations in the U.S. with regard to:

• information they disclose to third parties
• information (advice/sales pitches) they provide their customers

These institutions are monitored, and employees/institutions who violate the regulations are investigated and prosecuted (slapped with fines or jail time).

At the moment, there are a number of companies that collect sensitive information from consumers, and regardless of what they claim they are doing with that information, no one has any way of knowing if they are honoring those claims. Most public companies would leap at the opportunity to tell consumers whatever they wanted to hear if

1. the company could profit from it
2. consumers had no way of knowing the truth

The government needs to define regulations for this industry, it needs to be able to monitor the industry and it must have the power to enforce the regulations through fines and incarceration.

The companies in this industry will oppose regulation, claiming that the costs associated with monitoring and compliance would put them out of business *bullshit-the-cost-of-not-being-able-to-prostitute -your-data-will-put-them-out-of-business* Excuse me; I must be coming down with a cold. As I was saying, they will insist upon being allowed to regulate themselves. They must not be permitted to persuade the politicians of this.

Ask your representative or senator to consider what life would be like today if banks and brokerages were not regulated. Then tell them that this is far more serious, because while money can be refunded, information cannot be stuffed back into Pandora's Box once it is released.

Re:You Know You've Lost When...

[foniksonik]

You said it yourself... export it to html or pdf from word, then send it out. Word processing is for editing only, use what ever you like best, but for distribution use a more universal format and pick the one with the least overhead for the document... kind of like that old proverb "Rather hurt than maim, rather maim than injure, rather injure than kill."

If plain old text will do the job well enough use it, if you need more use RTF or PDF, need more then consider needing less... there's no need for killing your intended recipient.

Two very simple principles of Data Protection

[dunstan]

Two very simple principles of data protection are:

Personal data must not be released to a third party without the consent of the party who has given the data

Personal data must not be used for a purpose other than that for which it was collected

Now let's judge Passport against these:

As soon as somebody signs for a Passport account they start getting spam from third parties

As soon as somebody signs for a Passport account they start getting spam

Now, this isn't some precious view about what a pity junk email is - this is a basic breach of fundamental principles of privacy and data protection being perpetrated by a corporation with a large amount of trade in every EU country (and elsewhere in the world).

If they want to trade in the EU and make money here, they have to obey our laws. And our laws on privacy and data protection aren't that onerous - all that is asked is that if you collect personal data that you don't hand it out willy nilly, and that you use it for the purpose for which it was collected. Is that an unreasonable restraint on trade?

Dunstan

Re:They won't do anything

[ImaLamer]

You are completely right.

Any nation in the world who can safely cut ties from us, the U.S. should.

We are in the business of smashing you up and getting our multi-national companies in there and rebuilding (and getting all the profits or owning you in the end).

I'm eager to cut ties from the U.S.A. and I'm a citizen.

Sure, you're thinking; "How can you say that after September 11th? - We are at war you anti-American scum". To you I say; "Fuck off, I can challenge my leaders and their politics at anytime"