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By CCTV correspondent Kate Parkinson
Google has been given four months to change its privacy policy or face legal action. That’s according to the European Union’s data protection commissioners who say Google's new policy, adopted in March, gives the Internet giant "uncontrolled" use of personal data without the clear consent of its users.
They’re reading your emails, they know what you’re looking at online. And, since a dramatic rewrite of its privacy policy, Google has been streamlining ALL of the information it mines from its servers to build more comprehensive user profiles.
Enough is enough, says the European Union. An inquiry led by France’s data protection watchdog is highly critical of Google's new policy and says storing data without clear consent does not comply with EU legislation.
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, CNIL President said,“We want them to be more precise, to take real action in order to be in compliance. And if after three or four months they don’ t do anything, we will consider other ways for this compliance. And other, probably, legal ways.”
Google says everything it does is for its users and there are benefits to sharing information.
Amit Singhal, Google Search Spokesman said, “We in ‘Search’ strive to do the best we can for our users, as I have done working at Google for the last 12 years. My commitment is to our user and that’s what we’re doing in ‘Search.’ And some part of that, for example, the part to help me walk back to my hotel I need to give Google my location. So users will need to see a clear benefit to sharing this information.”
But not everyone sees it quite like that. Dany Cohen, Lawyer said, “You think that you allow them to use your web address, to use your name, to send you mails. But in fact they sell a lot of very precise, personal, elements that have been collected.”
The inquiry stopped short of demanding a wholesale roll-back of the privacy changes but, with the threat of legal action hanging, it seems this is Google’s last chance to fall into line.
The EU may not have been as tough as it could have been and Google was quick to point out that its privacy policy was not ruled illegal. But, Google is now firmly in the sights of the world’s regulators and its customers are not quite so inclined to see it as a big friendly giant.
中国公共新闻摘编：GAN JADE |
