On March 1st, despite trepidation and objections from consumer advocates and governments alike, Google’s much debated new privacy policy went into effect. Five days on, the world seems to have largely stayed with Google. The change was meant to streamline and simplify the company’s privacy policy across its expansive Internet empire. While the prospect of a simplified policy sounds attractive, opposition to the move cast the change as simply the latest attempt to monetize the personal data of users without their consent.
The Internet behemoth had been sending out reminders of the update to users across its many sites over the past few weeks. It’s quite possible you received this message in an email or were presented with it upon visiting one of your favorite sites, but, according to a study by British consumer advocate Big Brother Watch, you likely didn’t read it.
Objections to the new policy stem from the fact that Google is using the move to aggregate individuals’ personal information from across all Google-owned sites, which will afford them more accurate consumer profiles. Several media outlets prepared for the day by publishing how-to articles on retrieving data from Google’s grasp and general strategies to safeguard your privacy online.
While Google is still fighting off critics, the White House recently announced the “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights”, which aims to standardize privacy policies across markets. The bill of rights is intended to ensure minimum requirements to safeguard consumers, including transparency, assurances of security and accountability on behalf of companies collecting information, and the ability for consumers to control what information is collected and to access and correct that information. Additionally, it would clarify and set limits on what is considered “reasonable” collection and limit uses of information based on the context in which it was given.
The White House plans to take a two-pronged approach to implementation. The Department of Commerce will encourage the development of enforceable codes of conduct that implement the principles outlined in the bill of rights through multistakeholder processes. At the same time, the White House will urge Congress to pass legislation based on the proposals and enable the FTC to enforce it.
So is a collision on privacy policy imminent or are the White House and Google walking in step? Probably the latter. The White House report is careful to point out that “rather than requiring companies to adhere to a single, rigid set of requirements” the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights provides “general principles that afford companies discretion in how they implement them”. Despite the arguably invasive implications of Google’s new privacy policy, it is quite concise and self-explanatory. Not to mention the fact that it’s essentially a checklist of the proposals in the CPBR as they most definitely had a hand in its development.
As the White House moves forward with their proposal, we shouldn’t be too surprised to see other companies with a big web presence move toward the same type of policy “simplification” as Google has done.
