/PRNewswire/ -- Consumer Watchdog today called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a broad antitrust action against Google seeking remedial action that could include breaking the Internet giant into separate companies.
The letter from John M. Simpson, consumer advocate with the nonpartisan, nonprofit group, praised the DOJ for its opposition to the Google Books case and the Federal Trade Commission's intense investigation of the proposed $750 million acquisition of AdMob. However, the group said it is time to move beyond a reactive approach and "actively restrain Google's broader ability to abuse both users and advertisers."
"Such action could include breaking Google Inc. into multiple separate companies or regulating it as a public utility," the letter said. "Google exerts monopoly power over Internet searches, controlling 70 percent of the U.S. market. For most Americans - indeed, for most people in the world - Google is the gateway to the Internet. How it tweaks its proprietary search algorithms can ensure a business's success or doom it to failure."
Consumer Watchdog said Google subsidizes its other businesses by the monopolistic prices it is able to maintain because of its dominance in search.
Read Consumer Watchdog's letter to the Justice Department here:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/LTRjustice042110.pdf
Consumer Watchdog said the Justice Department could seek a variety of remedies:
-- One possibility would be to break Google into different companies devoted to different lines of business. Search could be separated from advertising. Gmail and its new social networking service, Buzz, could be spun off as a separate entity as could YouTube, a Google acquisition that we believe should have been denied at the time of merger. Enterprise applications could be another separate business.
-- Google's importance as a gateway to cyberspace requires a maximum degree of openness and transparency with the potential for government regulation. Arguably Google's monopoly position and importance to the Internet means that the company should be regarded as a public utility and regulated. Regulations could be designed to open up Google's ad platform to enable other competitors to compete. Rules could be crafted to create greater transparency in the operation of Google's ad platform to enable parties to negotiate more effectively - for example: by providing greater visibility into the maximum amount of the highest bid, how many search terms are shown per page, and how Google's "quality score" is derived and applied. Little, if any, of this information is currently public and openness would contribute to consumer choice and options as well as foster competition.
-- Another remedy would be to force Google to disgorge its monopolistic gains through the imposition of financial penalties. The payment would have to be significant enough to impact Google's future behavior. Perhaps the amount could be tied to paying back consumers for monetizing their private information and content without compensating them.
"The pending actions in the Books case and AdMob deal are important and must be pursued to their conclusion. It is, however, past time to act against Google's monopolistic and pervasive power over the entire Internet. Consumer Watchdog asks you to launch that action today," the letter concluded.
Consumer Watchdog released its letter to the Justice Department today at a news conference "The Antitrust Case Against Google" at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. In addition to Simpson, participants were Joseph Bial, special counsel at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, who represents myTriggers.com and TradeComet.com; Simon Buckingham, a New York based Internet and mobile entrepreneur; and Gary Reback, an attorney with Carrell & Ferrell and a founder of the Open Book Alliance. They spoke offering their personal views and analysis.
Consumer Watchdog, formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization with offices in Washington, DC and Santa Monica, Ca. Our Website is www.consumerwatchdog.org.
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Showing posts with label investigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label investigation. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Facebook needs to improve privacy practices, investigation finds
/PRNewswire/ -- In order to comply with Canadian privacy law, Facebook must take greater responsibility for the personal information in its care, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said today in announcing the results of an investigation into the popular social networking site's privacy policies and practices.
"It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," says Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.
The investigation, prompted by a complaint from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, identified several areas where Facebook needs to better address privacy issues and bring its practices in line with Canadian privacy law.
An overarching concern was that, although Facebook provides information about its privacy practices, it is often confusing or incomplete. For example, the "account settings" page describes how to deactivate accounts, but not how to delete them, which actually removes personal data from Facebook's servers.
The Privacy Commissioner's report recommends more transparency, to ensure that the social networking site's nearly 12 million Canadian users have the information they need to make meaningful decisions about how widely they share personal information.
The investigation also raised significant concerns around the sharing of users' personal information with third-party developers creating Facebook applications such as games and quizzes. (There are more than 950,000 developers in some 180 countries.) Facebook lacks adequate safeguards to effectively restrict these outside developers from accessing profile information, the investigation found.
The report recommended a number of changes, including technological measures to ensure that developers can only access the user information actually required to run a specific application, and also to prevent the disclosure of personal information of any of the user's friends who are not themselves signing up for an application.
The investigation also found that Facebook has a policy of indefinitely keeping the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts - a violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada's private-sector privacy law. The law is clear that organizations must retain personal information only for as long as is necessary to meet appropriate purposes.
Recommendations to Facebook included the adoption of a retention policy whereby personal information in deactivated accounts is deleted after a reasonable length of time.
Facebook has agreed to adopt many of the recommendations stemming from the Privacy Commissioner's investigation or, in some cases, has proposed reasonable alternatives to the measures recommended. However, there remain a number of recommendations that Facebook has not yet agreed to implement.
"We urge Facebook to implement all of our recommendations to further enhance their site, ensure they are in compliance with privacy law, and ultimately show themselves as models of privacy," says Assistant Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who led the investigation on behalf of the Office.
"Social networking sites can be a wonderful way to connect. They help us keep up with friends and share ideas and information with people around the globe. It is important for these sites to be in compliance with the law and to maintain users' trust in how they collect, use and disclose our personal information."
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will review after 30 days the actions Facebook takes to comply with the recommendations. The Commissioner is empowered to go to Federal Court to seek to have her recommendations enforced.
"The privacy issues stemming from social networking sites are still relatively new. All of us - social networking sites, users and data protection authorities - are only beginning to develop the appropriate rules of engagement in this new world of online communication," says Assistant Commissioner Denham. "The findings of our Facebook investigation are an important contribution to the development of these rules."
While the investigation recommendations are aimed at Facebook, Assistant Commissioner Denham said users of social networking sites also have responsibilities.
"We asked Facebook to clearly advise users about its privacy practices, but it's still up to the user to actually read it and use the privacy tools to control how their information is shared," she says. As a result of the investigation, Facebook has announced a new privacy tool for its site, which is aimed at giving users more control over who gets to see each item on their Facebook page.
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"It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," says Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.
The investigation, prompted by a complaint from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, identified several areas where Facebook needs to better address privacy issues and bring its practices in line with Canadian privacy law.
An overarching concern was that, although Facebook provides information about its privacy practices, it is often confusing or incomplete. For example, the "account settings" page describes how to deactivate accounts, but not how to delete them, which actually removes personal data from Facebook's servers.
The Privacy Commissioner's report recommends more transparency, to ensure that the social networking site's nearly 12 million Canadian users have the information they need to make meaningful decisions about how widely they share personal information.
The investigation also raised significant concerns around the sharing of users' personal information with third-party developers creating Facebook applications such as games and quizzes. (There are more than 950,000 developers in some 180 countries.) Facebook lacks adequate safeguards to effectively restrict these outside developers from accessing profile information, the investigation found.
The report recommended a number of changes, including technological measures to ensure that developers can only access the user information actually required to run a specific application, and also to prevent the disclosure of personal information of any of the user's friends who are not themselves signing up for an application.
The investigation also found that Facebook has a policy of indefinitely keeping the personal information of people who have deactivated their accounts - a violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada's private-sector privacy law. The law is clear that organizations must retain personal information only for as long as is necessary to meet appropriate purposes.
Recommendations to Facebook included the adoption of a retention policy whereby personal information in deactivated accounts is deleted after a reasonable length of time.
Facebook has agreed to adopt many of the recommendations stemming from the Privacy Commissioner's investigation or, in some cases, has proposed reasonable alternatives to the measures recommended. However, there remain a number of recommendations that Facebook has not yet agreed to implement.
"We urge Facebook to implement all of our recommendations to further enhance their site, ensure they are in compliance with privacy law, and ultimately show themselves as models of privacy," says Assistant Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who led the investigation on behalf of the Office.
"Social networking sites can be a wonderful way to connect. They help us keep up with friends and share ideas and information with people around the globe. It is important for these sites to be in compliance with the law and to maintain users' trust in how they collect, use and disclose our personal information."
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner will review after 30 days the actions Facebook takes to comply with the recommendations. The Commissioner is empowered to go to Federal Court to seek to have her recommendations enforced.
"The privacy issues stemming from social networking sites are still relatively new. All of us - social networking sites, users and data protection authorities - are only beginning to develop the appropriate rules of engagement in this new world of online communication," says Assistant Commissioner Denham. "The findings of our Facebook investigation are an important contribution to the development of these rules."
While the investigation recommendations are aimed at Facebook, Assistant Commissioner Denham said users of social networking sites also have responsibilities.
"We asked Facebook to clearly advise users about its privacy practices, but it's still up to the user to actually read it and use the privacy tools to control how their information is shared," she says. As a result of the investigation, Facebook has announced a new privacy tool for its site, which is aimed at giving users more control over who gets to see each item on their Facebook page.
-----
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Fayette Front Page
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
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