The Wall Street Journal essentially confirmed the huge flaw in the FTC-Google privacy settlement that I recently spotlighted; see Julia Angwin's excellent privacy article: "Apple, Google Collect User Data."

The WSJ investigation confirmed the fact that Google (and Apple too) are tracking their mobile device users' movements and locations based on "unique device identifiers" without users' knowledge or authorization.

The confirmation of this fact, confirms my point that the FTC-Google privacy settlement has a huge loophole in that it does not include "unique device identifiers" to be private information, a ridiculous distinction because a "unique device identifier" is obviously as private as a name or IP address, which the FTC already considers "covered information." FYI: the proposed bipartisan Kerry-McCain privacy legislation considers "unique device identifiers" to be private information.

If the FTC is truly serious about enforcing its fair representation laws and sanctioning deceptive and unfair privacy practices when they find them, it should modify its draft privacy settlement with Google to include "unique device identifiers," as covered private information, in the final settlement with Google that soon will be codified by the court.

In responding to the growing uproar of hypocrisy over comments made during Google's investor call by Google's CFO that "...everybody that uses Chrome gives us a guaranteed locked-in user" for Google," Brandi Sparkles, Google's renowned crisis PR expert, held a press conference today for just Google-friendly media.

• Brandi Sparkles was joined on the Mountain View dais by Google's Official Keeper of the Google Narrative, Mr. Stori Spinner, and Director of Google's "That Was Not Us" Office, Ms. Anne Teetrust-Violet.

Brandi Sparkles read the following statement to friendly reporters and did not take any questions, in keeping with Google CEO Larry Page's new approach to the media.

"All discussion of Chrome and how it gives Google a "locked-in user," and that "the lifetime value of a Chrome user is phenomenal," that some claim occurred on last week's Google earnings call, was not authorized by me, so it simply did not happen.

We are in the process of innovatively "tweaking" our search algorithm so you will not find any evidence to the contrary. Only the extensive remarks by new CEO Larry Page on the call should be considered official, and his comments should be more than enough information and transparency to put this issue permanently to rest.

FreePress' campaign director, Tim Karr, continues to overuse its main political tactic of demonizing anyone that disagrees with FreePress' goal of ridding the world of free market capitalism and property ownership.

FreePress' play book is all about the politicization of issues -- dividing people, not uniting them.

Kudos to Randy May of the Free State Foundation for his outstanding must-read piece in the National Review Online: "Rolling Back Regulation at the FCC --How Congress Can Help Competition Flourish."

It is a very important reminder that Congress nearly unanimously set U.S. communications policy in 1996 "to promote competition and reduce regulation," in stark contrast to the FCC's Open Internet de-competition policy.

• Randy is also spot on in encouraging Congress to re-fortify its extremely successful 1996 pro-competition policy by changing the burden-of-proof to assuming competition is superior to regulation, in order to counter the FCC's deep-seated bureaucratic instinct to regulate in order to perpetuate itself.

Randy is also dead right that the FCC looks backward to preserve its regulatory raison d'etre, rather than looking forward, obeying the law and trusting competition to drive consumer benefits.

We so need an FCC that genuinely encourages competition and lets consumers and the market choose market winners and losers, not the FCC.

Expect Google's bull-in-a-china-shop entry into social, to try and neutralize FaceBook, to bring lots more major unwanted privacy attention to the privacy-challenged social media business model, and to contribute to the eventual bursting of the Internet investment Bubble 2.0.

• The hot air that is inflating the social media Bubble 2.0 is that people somehow want to forfeit their privacy to socialize more efficiently, and that social media business models can indefinitely monetize privacy arbitrage against users' interests without consequence.
  • (See Part I of this series here.)
• Ironically, the investment fate of social media, and Bubble 2.0, will depend less on what social media companies do, and more of what the leviathan Google does in social media.
  • The venture capital community has long been painfully aware of the Google-leviathan's  outsized effect on every other VC investment, because they always ask start-ups "What if Google Does It?"

I.   Privacy Baseline is on the Move: Bipartisan Interest in Privacy Protection Strengthening

Anyone following social media or Google would be remiss to not notice the flurry of recent bipartisan, bicameral, and bi-branch interest in increasing privacy protection of online users in just the last few weeks.

Ironically Google's new "Copyright School" to better educate YouTube users of copyright law and responsibilities, slides Google down the slippery slope of tacitly admitting liability for copyright infringement in Viacom's billion dollar infringement suit against Google-YouTube.   (See Politico's story.)

There are two big takeaways from Google's new "Copyright School."

First, Google continues to basically blame users for copyright infringement while absolving itself of mass facilitation of copyright infringement.

The big open question here is does Google have a "copyright school" for its YouTube engineers/employees and have any of them attended it?

• It is telling that whenever the company that claims to work for users, gets in trouble, its users' fault not Google's.
• (Doesn't this sound eerily like Google implying Google's China's security breach was the fault of users not being careful enough?)

Second, why didn't Google do this shortly after it bought YouTube over three years ago?

The House's rejection of the FCC's December Open Internet order 240-179 is just the latest in an ongoing high-profile accountability gauntlet for the FCC's unauthorized, unwarranted and unjustified net neutrality rules.

• While the wheels of democracy, public accountability, and the rule of law can turn slowly, they do turn steadily.
• And from what we have seen so far, the FCC's out-of-the-mainstream, over-reach effort to regulate the Internet for the first time, has been pummeled in our Government's accountability process gauntlet to date, and it can be expected to continue to be pummeled going forward.

The Net Neutrality Accountability Gauntlet:

First, the President's January Executive Order, "Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review" to seek the "least burdensome" regulations, was a big post-mid-term election political pivot by the Administration to be more sensitive to business, economic growth and job creation concerns.

• Through the new lens of the President's Executive Order, the FCC's pre-mid-term-election-mindset net neutrality rule making has been viewed as badly out-of-focus with the renewed bipartisan interest in economic growth and job creation.

Google's ignominious Federal rap sheet only grows longer.

• Friday the DOJ effectively charged Google with misrepresentation to the public.
  • Google represented that its cloud service for Government was certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) since last July, when in fact it was not FISMA-certified for the product that Google claimed it was.
• This latest Google misrepresentation revelation came in a DOJ filing to the Federal Court which is hearing Google's case against the Department of Interior of the U.S. Government:
  • "On December 16, 2010, counsel for the Government learned that, notwithstanding Google's representations to the public at large, its counsel, the GAO and this court... Google does not have FISMA certification for Google Apps for Government."

I.   What does this mean?

There are many major going-forward implications resulting from the DOJ's latest antitrust enforcement action against Google -- this time to mitigate the anti-competitive effects of the proposed Google-ITA transaction.

• (See: Complaint, Competitive impact Statement, Proposed Final Judgement, Order, Release.)

Summary of Implications:

Ironically after Google's Larry Page pledged in the first line of his 2004 IPO letter -- that "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." -- Google under his new CEO leadership is in fact rapidly becoming much more of a "conventional" company.

Three Big Early Signs from Mr. Page's CEO-ship: