Privacy Group Gives Google Lowest Possible Grade

The Washington Post is reporting on a finding by London-based group Privacy International. In a new report, they find that Google has some of the worst privacy-protection practices anywhere on the web, giving them the lowest possible grade. "While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to 'achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy,' Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings. In a statement from one of its lawyers, Google said it aggressively protects its users' privacy and stands behind its track record. In its most conspicuous defense of user privacy, Google last year successfully fought a U.S. Justice Department subpoena demanding to review millions of search requests."

Links for nerds on stories that matter

[echucker]

The Privacy International article - The Privacy International article [privacyinternational.org]

Their report (interim rankings only) [privacyinternational.org]

Final rankings won't be available until September. Wonder what they'll be dicking around for three months for....

For the Tin Foil Hat Brigade (myself included)

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox and the Customize Google extension make a good team: http://www.customizegoogle.com/ [customizegoogle.com]

Features:

        * Remove click tracking
        * Anonymize your Google userid
        * Block Google Analytics cookies

        * Secure Gmail and Google Calendar, switch to https
        * Remove ads

Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter

[Bender0x7D1]

Actually, if you look at the preliminary report, they seem to have done a pretty good job. For example, Google does not consider IP address as personal information. This is OK if you are conneccting from a local coffee shop, but sucks if you have a static IP, or even do DHCP over a small range of addresses. It also points out that they don't always consider privacy implications before releasing information such as Street-level view. With the amount of data that Google gathers, analyzes, utilizes and releases (both publicly and its corporate partners), these kind of actions are a bit disturbing.

I'm not trying to say this report is perfect, or that there is enough information provided to evaluate it independently. However, seeing a conspiracy targeted at Google because a group got upset about some of their practices, and decided to do a study (which included a lot more companies than just Google), is a bit premature.

Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter

[Macthorpe]

Google seem to be taking it seriously enough to accuse Privacy International of being in bed with Microsoft, which is a laughable accusation.

Privacy International responded via an open letter here. [privacyinternational.org]

Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter

[Kijori]

If you look through the results it certainly seems like this to me. Try, for example, comparing Google's record with Friendster's (immediately above in their table). From the data they have gathered I would put the two companies on a par concerning their privacy issues, but Google is put at the very bottom while Friendster scores normally. Perhaps I'm being overly cautious but this doesn't feel like a balanced study.

How do we know Goog isn't giving up info already??

[classh_2005]

Seriously, did you know...(from wikipedia) "Under FISA, any agency may require a common carrier, landlord, custodian, or other person provide them with all information, facilities, or technical assistance necessary to accomplish ongoing electronic surveillance. They must also protect the secrecy of and cause as little disruption to the ongoing surveillance effort as possible." "A common carrier is an organization that transports persons or goods, and offers its services to the general public. In contrast, private carriers do not offer a service to the public, and provide transport on an irregular or ad-hoc basis. Common carriers typically transport persons or goods according to defined routes and schedules. Airlines, railroads, bus lines, cruise ships and freight companies may be common carriers." So, if the Goog was instructed to provide info, they wouldn't be telling us.

Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter

[wakim1618]

Their 'about us' on their website is also interesting http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-65428 [privacyinternational.org]. It is full of statements relating to diversity of various sorts such as the international diversity of board members, the professional diversity of members, diversity of funding sources.... yet almost nothing about competence or credentials with respect to technology or the internet. In fact, their list of expert members http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-145834 [privacyinternational.org] consists almost exclusively of government bureaucrats, lawyers, non-tech academics (e.g. law, business).

Re:Links for nerds on stories that matter

[fuego451]

Well, there is one, albeit small, link to Microsoft. From the "About Privacy International" page, UK advisory board:

Caspar Bowde ~ Privacy specialist, Microsoft, EMEA UK

Re:How do we know Goog isn't giving up info alread

[classh_2005]

Just as an aside, it's high time there was a serious effort at producing a decent open source search. Personally, I think a distributed network with anonymizing services makes the most sense. I know there are projects in existence already, but more people will have to become aware of them. Some Open Source search projects are:

http://www.majestic12.co.uk/projects/dsearch// [majestic12.co.uk]

http://www.aspseek.org/about.html// [aspseek.org]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ebiness// [sourceforge.net]

http://www.grub.org/html/documents.php// [grub.org]

http://lucene.apache.org/nutch/bot.html// [apache.org]

I really want to see one of these projects take off, I'd tap a vein at the local plasma center to donate funds :>

Re:Pot calls kettle black.

[k1e0x]

No its not a government conspiracy, they really ARE watching you. The average brit is photographed 200 to 400 times per day.

Hea, waat the hell, why not just pull random people over for.. no reason at all.. and take fingerprints. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6170070.stm [bbc.co.uk] Alread on it in the UK, the worlds leading police state.

Sound Orweallian..? guess what, it *looks* that way too. Check out the "it's for your 'safty'" ads. http://www.infowars.net/articles/april2006/170406w atching.htm [infowars.net]

Re:A suggestion...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google loses the legal fight to defend their data from government violations, then you should be looking at your government, not Google for the privacy violation.

If Google wouldn't keep such overwhelming amount of users' private data then they would not be able to provide the government with it or abuse it themselves.

Re:You can't

[renbear]

We only run a relatively small network, but you can bet that if anything went wrong, we could walk into the server room and pick up the appropriate back-up tapes and/or call the off-site data archive service we use and get every copy they have within a couple of hours.

A very small network, apparently. Most backup methods are predicated on the fact that you will never need to delete JUST ONE record out of a backup set, without deleting the entire backup (of that filesystem, data store, etc.) Also, I rather suspect they use read-only media to store their backups-- but that's only a suspicion. Deleting part of a backup is much, MUCH harder-- well-nigh impossible-- than restoring part of a backup.

Asking Google to cleanse out ALL of your data, at your whim, is... a bit unreasonable, don't you think?

One of the biggest differences between Google and other online companies is this: Google is being absolutely, utterly honest about their actual privacy policies and data retention. They will NEVER lie just to tell you what you want to hear, nor will they pretend things are easier than they really are.

And they're getting raked over the coals for it.