EU Warns Google on User Data Records Kept Too Long, Privacy Officials Say
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By Kevin J. O'Brien and Thomas Crampton  In the latest example of a U.S. technology giant potentially being called on the carpet in Europe, Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing data on its users for up to two years.
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Europe's major consumer group, BEUC, said yesterday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.'s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers' choice of Web content.
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Google attacked European  parliamentarians and privacy advocates on Monday for trying to  have competition authorities consider the handling of personal  information in its $3.1 billion takeover of rival DoubleClick.
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Global privacy counsel obsessed with male physique A brief summation of Google's new privacy policies. One: Your search data will be made anonymous after it sits on the company's servers for 18 months. Two: Your Google browser cookies will expire if you don't visit the site for two years. And three: a man should not be allowed to hide his "shrinking shoulders" and "protruding paunch" behind a business suit and necktie.â¦
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Google shortens cookie expiration to two years, but regular users won't see privacy benefits.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.
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Google responds to attacks on its privacy record.
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EU justice chief Franco Frattini said Wednesday that Internet search leader Google Inc. had offered to cut the time it retains data on user searches from the current 24 months to 18 months amid growing concerns it could be violating EU privacy rules.
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European data protection officials are expanding their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy.
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'Basic rights need to be guaranteed' in the third pillar The EU's data protection watchdog has warned that European officials are in danger of eroding basic data protection principles and has called on them to reconsider their actions.â¦
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Europe&#39;s top data protection official, European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx, criticized plans to create a European equivalent of the PNR (passenger name records) gathered by U.S. authorities, questioning the plan&#39;s necessity and proportionality.&quot;The fight against terrorism can be a legitimate ground to apply exceptions to the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection, but only within certain limits,&quot; Hustinx said in a statement on Thursday.&quot;The necessity of intended measures must be supported by clear and undeniable elements, and their proportionality must be demonstrated. These two aspects are essential conditions and they are clearly not fulfilled in this case,&quot; he said.The U.S. introduced PNR gathering in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. After some initial resistance, the European Union agreed to allow airlines to hand over to American authorities details about passengers flying from the E.U. to the U.S., before a flights&#39; departure.Since then, Madrid and London have been attacked by suicide bombers, stiffening the resolve of European politicians to tighten security further.Last month the European Commission proposed a raft of pan-E.U. antiterrorism measures, including a PNR gathering system for all flights into the E.U. Under the proposed plan, air carriers would be obliged to hand over 19 pieces of passenger information, including the name, address, passport number, credit-card number, and history of changes in any flight schedule. The data would be retained for up to 13 years and be shared between authorities in all E.U. member states.This is very similar to the shape of the PNR agreement reached with the U.S. in June. Airlines have to hand over 19 details about passengers on flights to the U.S., and the U.S. authorities can keep the information for up to 15 years.Hustinx said the E.U. PNR plan would have &quot;a major impact on privacy and data protection rights of air passengers.&quot;He also criticized the agreement for its lack of clarity. In particular, he pointed out that the Commission&#39;s proposal doesn&#39;t say what the applicable legal framework for the plan would be, doesn&#39;t specify which authorities should have access to the data and fails to give rules on transferring passenger data outside of the E.U.Hustinx urged E.U. lawmakers to delay the PNR plan until after the recently agreed Lisbon Treaty comes into force, which is expected within the next year once each member state ratifies it in its national parliament.The treaty would force the Council of national governments to reach agreement with the European Parliament on the PNR plan. Currently the Council can decide on the matter by itselfMany parliamentarians are bitterly opposed to the E.U./U.S. PNR agreement and to the E.U. PNR plan.The European Commission wasn&#39;t immediately available to comment on Hustinx&#39;s comments.
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(InfoWorld) - Data protection officials from 27 European countries have warned Google it is storing data on people's searches for too long -- but Europe's top privacy guardian, the European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx, believes Google's efforts to respect the privacy of European citizens in its Internet search software "is not just window dressing."His comments at a conference in Amsterdam on Thursday come a week after the data protection officials wrote to the company, expressing concerns that the company could be breaching European laws by holding on to details about people's Internet searches for too long.The officials from each of the 27 member states of the European Union sit on a Europe-wide data protection committee called the Article 29 Working Group, which is chaired by Hustinx.The group has asked Google to justify why it needs to retain the data for up to two years, and whether the company has "fulfilled all the necessary requirements" on data protection. European Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini said Friday that the questions posed in that letter are "legitimate."But speaking on the sidelines of a data protection conference in Amsterdam, which Google's global privacy chief Peter Fleischer was also attending, Hustinx played down the inquiry."I see a company which has very powerful tools, thinking about integrating privacy solutions -- that's the big picture," he said.Google's efforts to respect people's privacy "isn't just window dressing, but we will hold them to what they are saying," he added.His comments came directly after Fleischer made a presentation explaining how Google's personal search function works. Users can opt in to this more refined search tool, using a log-in identity and password. Once they have done so, the search engine takes their Internet searching history into consideration when picking results for new searches.For example, if you have been searching for cars recently and you tap in the search term "golf", the results will focus on cars of that model rather than on the sport, Fleischer explained.Users of the personalized search function can delete searches they made in the past, in order to prevent them influencing the search results they get in future, Fleischer added.By allowing people to opt in to the personalized search function and by giving them the ability to customize their search history, Google was respecting people's privacy, Fleischer said.Google stores information about all searches, both personalized and normal, he said, but details of normal searches can't be linked to an individual."Google does have the information but it can't link it to you," he said.In the past, Fleischer has said that the company needs to keep details of people's searches for security reasons, to help guard against hacking.Information about people's searches can also help track criminal activity such as child porn rings, but security agencies are mainly interested in the information Google stores on the users of its e-mail service, Gmail, he said.The police aren't interested in the information about people's general searches, he said. He declined to comment on whether details about subscribers to the personalized search function had been accessed by the authorities.European data protection law limits the amount of time companies can hold on to personal data gleaned from electronic networks to the amount of time the information is required for billing purposes. The law was written mainly with fixed and mobile phone technology in mind, but it also applies to data gathered from Internet searches.Fleischer said the law, passed in 1995 when Google hadn't been born, is totally out of date and he urged European lawmakers to update it to take account of new technologies."The technical architecture has changed a lot since 1995, even though the basic principles of privacy still apply. The time has come to re-think some of this process," he said.In particular, the way the law deals with international transfers of data has to be reviewed, he said. Europe has one of the toughest data protection regimes in the world. The law forbids the passing of personal information about European citizens to other parts of the world with more lax data protection regimes.The U.S. is considered to offer inferior data protection, so companies operating on both sides of the Atlantic have to sign complicated get-out clauses in order to pass information about their staff or customers to offices in the U.S."The Internet is all about international transfers," Fleischer said. He wants the different parts of the world to cooperate in order to create a single approach to data protection "We as a company have a single approach to privacy right across the world. We can't run a system that has different privacy levels for, say Google.com and the Dutch site Google.nl -- that would be crazy."So if we can do it why can't policymakers?" he asked.He called for a global privacy treaty. "It will be complicated and will probably take a decade, but the technology of the internet has been a wake-up call for policymakers that this is needed. We need to start talking now. We in the industry have to start the debate," he said.
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Addressing privacy concerns, the company announced on Tuesday that it would keep the Web search histories of users for only 18 months instead of 24.
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European group asks for an investigation into how Google's DoubleClick acquisition could affect privacy rights.
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Europe's major consumer group BEUC said Wednesday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.'s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers' choice of Web content.
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A European Union probe triggered by concerns over how long Google stores user information has widened to include all Internet search engines.
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Google Inc. is shortening the life span of its "cookie" data-tracking file &#151; but it's not clear whether the move would do much to enhance privacy.