Google, other tech giants call for law to protect consumers

Post Comment   Email Story   Print Story   Read Comments

SAN FRANCISCO,(USA):June 21, 2006 Fresh from a fight with US officials over the sanctity of online search information, Google on Tuesday joined an alliance of technology firms calling for federal legislation protecting consumer privacy.

"Today we live in a digital economy where both beneficial and potentially harmful uses of personal information are multiplying," said a statement from the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum, whose roster includes such technology powerhouses as Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett Packard.

"The time has come for a serious process to consider comprehensive harmonized federal privacy legislation to create a simplified, uniform but flexible legal framework" for protecting consumers, it said.

"The legislation should provide protection for consumers from inappropriate collection and misuse of their personal information and also enable legitimate businesses to use information to promote economic and social value."

Google counsel Nicole Wong said on Tuesday in a blog posting on the Google Website that the company joined a group of "notable US companies" calling for federal consumer privacy legislation.

There was a "patchwork quilt" of US state consumer protection laws that varied depending on location and subject, with examples being health, financial, or child-related data, according to Wong.

"This matrix of laws is complex, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory," Wong wrote. "For consumers, the result is a set of privacy protections that are uneven at best."

The Internet was "beset with spyware, malware, phishing, identity-theft, and other privacy threats" that made protecting privacy an industry-wide challenge and highlighted the lack of a coherent regulatory structure, according to Wong.

A national standard for Internet privacy needed to be "a robust framework" because it would supersede state laws, the forum maintained.

The forum was created late last year and members that signed the statement on Tuesday included Eastman Kodak, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Proctor and Gamble, Eli Lilly and Company, and Hewitt and Associates.

Google's joining the forum came in the wake of its legal standoff earlier this year with US federal government officials who demanded online search records from the company.

The standoff ended in March when US District Judge James Ware ordered Google to turn over only a fraction of the information sought.

Maintaining that the case raised "vital interests," Ware ordered the Mountain View, California-based search engine giant to hand over data on just 50,000 Websites.

Ware rejected the Justice Department's attempt to obtain more sensitive data that might disclose the online search habits of Web users, noting that that could spark a possible "loss of goodwill" among Google's users.

Federal prosecutors sought the information as ammunition in a legal fight to revive an overturned 1998 statute making it a crime for Websites to allow minors access to adult material online such as pornography.

Wong at the time proclaimed Ware's decision "a clear victory" for the company and Internet users.

Read Related News