US near bottom of global privacy index
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Individual privacy is under threat around the world as governments continue introducing surveillance and information-gathering measures, according to an international rights group.
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Anonymous data sets are an enormous boon for researchers, but the recent de-anonymization of Netflix customer data shows there are privacy risks as well. Commentary by Bruce Schneier.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Drawing upon its clout as the Internet's most powerful company, Google Inc. is calling on businesses and regulators throughout the world to adopt international standards for protecting consumer privacy online and offline.
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Google responds to attacks on its privacy record.
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By Tom Henry, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio  Dec. 15--A public right-to-know law that Americans have used since 1984 to track neighborhood pollutants has overwhelming support from the public at large, yet the Bush Administration wants to weaken it, a national watchdog group said yesterday.
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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 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.
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NEW YORK Oct. 18, 2004 - People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new privacy risk to worry about: Google&#39;s free new tool that indexes a PC&#39;s contents for quickly locating data.
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Advocacy group Privacy International says California-based Google ranks last among 12 major Internet-based companies when users' privacy is concerned.
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Blog: Watchdog group ranks Google among the worst top Internet sites for privacy, but Google says report is based on inaccuracies.
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'Identity reconstruction' still possible Large databases do not adequately protect sensitive personal information, according to a statistics professor in the US, who says that individuals can still be identified despite attempts to anonymise them.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - When it comes to protecting the privacy of its users, Google ranks worse than any other Internet company, according to an interim report by Privacy International. The international watchdog group also accused Google of engaging in a smear campaign in response to its findings and demanded an apology. Privacy International's findings, based on six months of research, placed Google at the bottom of 23 Internet companies examined by the group. Google was the only company to earn the bottom ranking for "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." Other companies, such as Microsoft and Yahoo, rated slightly better that Google. Microsoft was given a rating of four out of six for "serious lapses in privacy practices." Yahoo was given a ranking of five of six, one better than Google, for "substantial and comprehensive privacy threats." "We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research, we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google's approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations," Privacy International said. In particular, the group cited the large amount of data that Google collects about its users and lack of privacy controls. "Google's increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user's life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook," Privacy International said. "Neither of these elements has been demonstrated." Privacy International plans to issue a final report in September. Google executives were not immediately available to comment on the report's findings. But an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt from Privacy International Director Simon Davies accused the company of engaging in a smear campaign in response to the group's findings. "Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that 'Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft.' I presume this was motivated because Microsoft scored an overall better result than Google in the rankings," Davies wrote. Google allegedly claimed a conflict of interest exist because one of 70 people on Privacy International's board of advisors is a current Microsoft employee. Davies rejected the charge and listed five critical actions the group has taken against Microsoft, including support for the European Commission's investigation into Microsoft. "Can I be so bold as to suggest that your company's actions stem from sour grapes that you achieved the lowest ranking amongst the Internet giants?" Davies wrote, demanding an apology from Schmidt. This isn't the first time that Privacy International has raised privacy concerns about Google. In 2004, the group filed a privacy complaint over Google's Gmail service with regulators in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Australia, and Canada, as well as with the European Commission. To date, Google has rejected concerns over the information it gathers and stores about users. Speaking recently in South Korea, Schmidt dismissed privacy concerns over the data collected by the company, saying users worried about privacy can always choose not to use the company's services. He also said Google deletes information about users after a certain period of time but did not say how long that period is. Privacy concerns about Google have also been raised overÂ the company's acquisition of DoubleClick, sparking anÂ investigation by the U.S. Fair Trade Commission (FTC). That investigation is ongoing. While Google has taken flack from critics for its privacy policies, the company has acted to protect users in at least one case: In January 2006, Google was the only company to resist a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) subpoena for a random sampling of 1 million Web addresses that users searched for. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo did not fight the DOJ's request, which did not seek information that would have identified the users who made the search requests contained in the sample. Ultimately, Google shared a smaller amount of data with the DOJ.
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As eastern Europe improves privacy safeguards for its citizens, western Europe and the United States are stepping up surveillance. The U.S. and Britain rank with China and Russia as the among the most intrusive of governments.
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Paris - The United States ranked 22nd alongside Belgium and behind countries including Bosnia, France and Trinidad and Tobago on a media freedom index released this week by Reporters Without Borders.
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Privacy advocates warn that the shift to using handheld devices for email, telephone calls and Internet searches has created a global gold mine for snoops and spies.
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After FoI request denied by FBI A privacy group is suing the US Government for information about surveillance programmes after the FBI failed to respond to a freedom of information request.â¦
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KUALA LUMPUR: Organisations around the world are not protecting their information sufficiently against increasingly more potent threats, a new survey by Ernst &amp; Young has found.