-By Scott Cleland
The Detailed Case from my House Testimony
In my testimony Thursday on Internet privacy before Chairman Markey’s House Internet Subcommittee, I documented for Congress the detailed case of how Google, which is subject to no Federal privacy laws, is the single biggest threat to Americans’ privacy today.
The evidence assembled here shows how Google’s mission and culture are hostile to privacy, how Google’s unprecedented scale and scope enable a breath-taking collection of intimate “blackmail-able” information, and how Google’s track record is not worthy of trust.
From my testimony:
Case Study: How Google Systematically Threatens Americans’ Privacy
To begin, I am not alone in believing Google’s privacy practices are a particularly serious consumer protection problem.
- Privacy watchdog, Privacy International, ranked Google worst in its world survey on privacy in 2007 and described Google as “hostile to privacy.”
- EPIC, CDD, and USPIRG filed suit with the FTC last year challenging Google’s privacy practices as deceptive trade practices.
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- Recently, a broad coalition of privacy advocates pressured Google to finally comply with California privacy law and put a link to their privacy policy on their home page.
First, Google’s mission is antithetical to privacy
Google’s megalomaniacal “mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful.” Google’s mission is so uniquely antithetical to privacy–it actually warrants the creation of a new term: “publicacy.” Google’s unique and radical “publicacy” mission believes “the world’s information,” is (and should be) public not private. (Note the mission statement puts no qualifier on “information” other than “the world’s”.)
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