DoubleClick deal raises EU privacy concerns
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Europe's major consumer group, BEUC, said yesterday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.'s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers' choice of Web content.
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InfoWorld - Google&#160;on Tuesday confirmed that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating its&#160;proposed $3.1 billion purchase&#160;of online advertising seller DoubleClick.
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The European Commission's antitrust arm will use the next four weeks to pore over the specifics of the merger between Google and DoubleClick to ensure that it falls within the boundaries of the EU's strict laws regarding monopolies.
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New Web ads respond to your activities--and this has privacy advocates worried.
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Discussions about Google's plan to buy DoubleClick raised the question whether an IP address is legally private.
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The proposed Google merger could still be held up in Europe, where personal privacy has more legal protections than in the United States.
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Europe's major consumer group BEUC said Wednesday that it feared Internet search engine Google Inc.'s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick Inc. would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers' choice of Web content.
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Three out of four Europeans are worried about posting their personal information on the Internet.
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Google says 'there's no black and white answer' The European Union moved closer to labelling Internet Protocol addresses as personal information yesterday at a public hearing of the Civil Liberties Committee.â¦
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Europe&#39;s top data protection officials are working to clarify a grey area of Internet law: the legal status of an IP address.The question of whether an IP address should be considered private data occupied much time at a hearing earlier this week at the European Parliament regarding Google&#39;s planned acquisition of DoubleClick. If a person can be identified by an IP address, then the address is private, said Peter Schaar, the German data protection commissioner and chairman of the Europe-wide privacy group, the Article 29 Committee.This has been the rule in most countries in the European Union for more than 10 years. However, it is hard to set a clear-cut rule because some ISPs&#160;give out fresh IP addresses to subscribers each time they go online, and people also buy time online at Internet cafes.The Article 29 Committee has been examining the question of IP addresses as part of its analysis of how search engines respect European data protection rules. It is expected to reach some conclusions by mid-June, according to an official working for the committee who asked not to be named.The committee cannot fine transgressors of E.U. data protection rules, nor can it propose legislation, but it can prompt the European Commission to do so.Internet search companies, including Google, argue that an IP address merely locates a computer rather than identifying who is sitting at that computer. Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications for how search engines record and use people&#39;s data.If the committee persuaded lawmakers to toughen IP address protection in Europe &quot;that would definitely change things [for search engines],&quot; said John Steinback, a spokesman on policy matters for Google.From Google&#39;s perspective, whether an IP address is personal depends on the context, Steinback said. An ISP can link an IP address to a subscriber, but a Web site visited by the person using a specific IP address cannot link the address to a person, he explained.The European Parliament hearing was convened by the assembly&#39;s civil liberties committee to assess whether citizens&#39; privacy would be harmed by Google&#39;s planned acquisition of Internet advertising company DoubleClick. The deal, which has already been given the green light by U.S. regulators, is under investigation by European Commission competition officials. However, like its U.S. equivalents, the Commission won&#39;t consider the privacy question.Nevertheless, if data being collected for one purpose by one of the companies is then handed over to the other company for use in a different way, European data protection officials would be obliged to intervene, said the official close to the Article 29 Committee.&quot;Google will have to respect all the obligations of DoubleClick, including its data protection obligations,&quot; the official said. If the two databases are to be used for the same purposes, then they would be deemed compatible and could merge. &quot;But if there was an incompatibility between the two databases, then they couldn&#39;t be merged,&quot; he said.The European Parliament&#39;s civil liberties committee said it would be holding more seminars to examine the issues surrounding data protection in the months and years to come.
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Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data for up to two years.
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In a post on its Web site, Google said the deal could pose threats to âinnovation and opennessâ on the Internet.
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Google's calls for a global privacy standard are not enough to allay concerns about its purchase of DoubleClick.
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European data protection officials are expanding their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy.
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Google is being investigated by the European Union over possible violation of the bloc's privacy rules. At issue is the search engine's practice of retaining user information for up to two years.
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Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing search data from its users for up to two years.
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Nearly lost in the news about the&#160;U.S. Federal Trade Commission&#39;s (FTC) approval on Thursday of Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;was another action by the agency: The publication of a proposed set of privacy principles governing online behavioral advertising.The release of the privacy principles is an important and welcome step, said Peter Swire, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a law professor at Ohio State University. Although some privacy groups blasted the FTC for approving Google&#39;s DoubleClick deal, the acquisition has helped place focus on the entire online advertising industry&#39;s privacy practices, Swire said.&quot;It&#39;s good that the FTC is shining a spotlight on this industry,&quot; Swire said Friday. &quot;Online advertising is in its second boom. They&#39;re trying lots of new techniques; some of those techniques have privacy problems.&quot;The FTC hosted a workshop on behavioral advertising and privacy in November. The agency&#39;s proposed privacy principles, a series of &quot;self-regulatory&quot; steps the FTC is recommending for online advertisers, come in part from that workshop.Among the FTC&#39;s proposals:-- Web sites that collect information for behavioral advertising should provide a &quot;clear, consumer-friendly, and prominent statement&quot; about the reason for collecting that data. Consumers should be able to choose whether they will allow that information to be collected.-- Any company that collects or stores consumer data for behavioral advertising should provide &quot;reasonable security&quot; and should keep data only as long as necessary to fulfill legitimate business or law enforcement needs.-- Companies should only collect sensitive data for behavioral advertising if they obtain express consent from the consumer.The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a group focused on online privacy and civil liberties, also praised the FTC for releasing its privacy principles. The principles are a &quot;clear sign that the commission does not believe that the industry&#39;s current self-regulation framework is sufficient to protect consumers today,&#8221; CDT Deputy Director Ari Schwartz said in a statement.CDT also called on Google to &quot;step up and make a clear, public statement about its plans for proactively protecting consumer privacy.&quot; Consumer privacy in the behavioral advertising market remains an industrywide concern that requires the focus of consumers, policymakers and companies, CDT said.The release of the privacy principles should send a signal to online advertisers, said Leslie Harris, CDT&#39;s president. &quot;In releasing these principles, the FTC hasn&#39;t closed the door to other options,&quot; she said in a statement. &quot;Self-regulation is part of the solution for protecting consumer privacy, but clearly self-regulation hasn&#39;t lived up to its promises.... We&#39;ll need a rigorous mix of self-regulation backed by regulatory enforcement.&quot;Other privacy groups criticized the FTC for its ruling allowing Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick to move forward. The agency had reason to act on privacy concerns raised by the merger and failed, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of three privacy groups that asked the FTC to block the merger or impose privacy conditions.The FTC could have established &quot;the necessary safeguards for personal data and competition that could have allowed a global [privacy] framework to emerge,&quot; Rotenberg said. &quot;[The FTC&#39;s] sole purpose is to protect the public interest. It failed to do so ... in a case that will have far-reaching implications for the Internet economy and the privacy rights of American consumers.&quot;Joseph Turow, a communication professor at the University of Pennsylvania, agreed. The European Union is still investigating the Google-DoubleClick deal, with a decision not due until April, and it is likely that regulators there will take a harder look at privacy issues, he said.Consumer tracking and privacy should be part of the FTC&#39;s antitrust review when it looks at online advertising deals, he said. &quot;You can&#39;t talk about the digital advertising market today without talking about competition in targeting Americans,&quot; he said.Google supports the FTC&#39;s efforts to create privacy guidelines, David Drummond, the company&#39;s senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer, said in a blog post. &quot;The FTC&#39;s decision publicly affirms what we and numerous independent analysts have been saying for months: Our acquisition does not threaten competition in what is a robust, innovative, and quickly evolving online advertising space,&quot; Drummond wrote. &quot;In fact, we firmly believe the transaction will increase competition and bring substantial benefits to consumers, web publishers, and online advertisers.&quot;Critics failed to show specific privacy harms, added Thomas Lenard, president of iGrowthGlobal, a conservative think tank. &quot;I don&#39;t see a problem because nobody has demonstrated the acquisition will result in any privacy harm to consumers,&quot; he said. &quot;All the allegations are very hypothetical. Privacy advocates assert that Google&#39;s and DoubleClick&#39;s activities injure consumers, but they don&#39;t provide any evidence.&quot;If the FTC had blocked the deal, it would be &quot;penalizing success, and that would send a bad signal to the marketplace,&quot; Lenard added. &quot;That would also be bad for consumers.&quot;