If these principles were longstanding and indeed "reflect strong privacy standards and practices" why did Google have such privacy uproars over:
- Google's automated reading of all gmails even those private emails of people that do not use gmail?
- Google Earth's display of the White House roof and other sensitive sites around the world?
- Google StreetView's pictures of peoples' private property that prompted privacy outcries around the world? and
- The Google Book Settlement, which still has no privacy protections for what people read like they do in libraries?
- (These examples are illustrative and not exhaustive.)
"3. Make the collection of personal information transparent."
- If Google was indeed operating under these privacy principles all along, why was it only in 2009 that Google created the Privacy dashboard, and their Data Liberation Front?
- And if Google is so transparent with how they collect private information, why do major respected surveys by Consumer Reports and the Annenberg School strongly suggest that consumers are largely unaware with what Google and others are doing with their private information online?
"4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy."
- If the "dashboard" is supposed to be "meaningful choice," why do Google's privacy practices not also offer an on-off switch, a brake or a reverse?
- If the Data Liberation Front is supposed to give users full portability "choice", why did the user never have meaningful choice in whether Google collected the information in the first place?
"5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold."
- If Google was truly a responsible steward of the information they hold, why do they collect, track and store more private information about more people in the world, private information that puts these users at enormous unnecessary privacy risk, if Google has a data breach, is hacked or is subpoenaed ( all of which have happened)?
- A good steward would not collect and store private information in such volumes without a users meaningful knowledge that could put the user at enormous risk of loss, blackmail or prosecution.
In sum, Google's Privacy Principles are new and do not reflect how Google has operated over the last decade. As much as Google gives privacy lip service, Google actually remains the single biggest threat to Americans' privacy.
- Google has a publicacy business model built almost entirely on exploiting the use of private information without users' meaningful consent or control.
- Maybe the single biggest threat to Google's business model would be if users actually were in control of their own private information and not Google.
Publicacy vs Privacy Series:
Part I: The Growing Privacy-Publicacy Fault-line -- The Tension Underneath World Data Privacy Day
Part II: Implications of User Location Tracking
Part III: Extreme Publicacy -- Does Privacy Stand a Chance?
Part VI: Why FTC’s Behavioral-Ad Principles Are a Big Deal
Part V: Privacy prevailed in Facebook's privacy-publicacy earthquake
Part VI: Do People Own Their Private Information Online?
Part VII: Where is the line between privacy and publicacy?
Part VIII: "Privacy is Over"
Part IX: "Interventional Targeting? "Get into people's heads"
Part X: "Latest publicacy arguments against privacy"
Part XI: "The Web 2.0 movement is opposed to the privacy movement."
Part XII: "No consumer control over the commercialization of their privacy?"
Part XIII: "Does new Government cookie policy favor publicacy over privacy? "
Part XIV: "Google Book Settlement "absolutely silent on user privacy"
Part XV: Yet more evidence of Google's hostility to privacy
Part XVI: Poll: Americans strongly oppose publicacy & expect online privacy
Part XVII: FaceBook CEO throws privacy under the bus