
Google Data Chief Says ‘Flawed’ EU Privacy Law Is Dead - lelf
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/google-data-chief-says-flawed-eu-privacy-law-is-dead.html
======
blub
No matter what contributions they've made to open source and various projects,
I'm starting to think that Google's total contribution to society has been a
net negative.

Few companies in the world can be said to have tried harder to destroy the
individual's right to privacy. And with recent developments it's even more
damning that they're doing this.

~~~
r0h1n
I'm a card-carrying member of the anti-Google brigade, but Fleischer's actual
blog post wasn't all that bad -
[http://peterfleischer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/turning-our-
bac...](http://peterfleischer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/turning-our-backs-
on-2013.html)

> _Privacy is all about the individual human being. So, it 's somehow fitting
> that the biggest privacy surprise in 2013 was created by one individual
> human being, the courageous whistleblower, Mr Snowden, who opened the
> world's eyes to the almost unimaginable scale and scope of mass government
> surveillance. We'll have to wait until 2014 to learn if governments do
> anything meaningful to improve transparency and oversight of their spy
> agencies' work. I have low expectations._

And this:

> _More countries around the world passed privacy laws modeled on Europe 's.
> The US continued down its path of exceptionalism: the Federal government
> debated, but did not pass, any meaningful privacy legislation, but many US
> States actively filled the void with sweeping new privacy laws, fulfilling
> their historic role as laboratories of potential future Federal laws.
> Technology advanced, raising new questions and igniting new debates. Law
> suits and prosecutions came and went, and in my personal case, happily,
> mostly went._

~~~
blub
It's not about the blog post and not about this specific law, but Google's
attitude as a company. Their business model is at odds with privacy.

The only thing that Google can do to show that they respect their users is to
stop storing so much information about them and change their TOS to restrict
usage of data and ensure there's a convenient way to control it for the end
user. Instead they force them to input more info like their real names and
phone numbers.

As for this blog, it's so ridiculous that they talk about Snowden and yet
Google is one of the main personal information providers included in the
revelations. I don't think I've seen one post from a Google employee that
demonstrated they understand privacy, they are hopeless.

------
lispm
That does not surprise me at all. I've been to an overview talk here in
Hamburg/ Germany by a guy responsible for Google research in Europe. The whole
topic around 'Privacy' was not existing for him. Google does everything to
sabotage any progress. 'Privacy' is not in their interest as a marketing
company whose money is made with collecting and selling all kinds of user
data.

They don't architecture services with as little user data as possible. They
are also don't care if user data is 'secure' (during transfer or storage).
Google takes the opposite approach: collect as much data about a user as
possible (mails, contacts, documents, movements, ...) and then let's see what
one can do with that. For example classify the user and predict his actions.
Each user request to Google helps them predicting more and more accurately
what the user is doing and what he will do. Then they design offerings around
that and sell it. This data is so valuable, that the government can't ignore
it. They want the data and the prediction possibilities, too.

The paranoid view is that Google is a NSA frontend.

~~~
salient
> The paranoid view is that Google is an NSA frontend.

The sad thing is that they don't even have to be that on purpose. They collect
so much data on every person, that NSA is going to use them as a frontend
anyway, which is exactly what they did, until they discovered what NSA was
doing recently, and made some changes, by encrypting data in transit _within_
their network. However, I still don't think they are encrypting data _at
rest_. So if NSA breaks their transit encryption again, they will be free to
collect all the data again.

The day when Google can _naturally_ be seen as an _enemy_ of the Internet and
human privacy has come. Up until SOPA/ITU they could still be seen as a _net
ally_ , because they did help with some pretty big issues against the
Internet. But from now on, I don't think they will be doing anything as major
in _favor_ of the users, while they _are_ doing major actions _against_ users
of the Internet, such as trying to kill the privacy law in EU. So they are a
net enemy to the Internet already.

While they've created that "campaign" with some other big companies against
the NSA, the goal of the campaign itself sounds very weak to me. They're just
trying to be more transparent with what they can tell people about what the
government is requesting of them. I think they could do so much more, such as
joining Mozilla's "StopWatching.us" movement. The reason they aren't doing
that? Because _Google_ is "watching us", and they probably believe joining
such a campaign would be detrimental to their business, even if fighting for
user privacy is the right thing to do.

So whether they have a clear stated goal of "killing privacy worldwide" the
way NSA does, or not, it doesn't matter. Because the incentives to do just
that are too strong for them, and they are pushing them in that direction
anyway. For them to stop doing that would require rethinking their business
model that's based on "tracking everything" (which I think should happen), and
align themselves with the users.

------
doe88
> Fleischer’s comments come a day after EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding
> showed no interest in dropping the rules she first proposed two years ago.
> In a speech yesterday, she said the 28-nation bloc must “move full speed
> ahead” toward clinching a deal on data protection.

I hope she will prevail. She has already demonstrated in the past she is a
strong commissioner.

------
codev
Ugh, I would have hoped by now we'd be moving to the US implementing privacy
laws. Instead it seems like we're moving in the opposite direction.
Corporations are learning how to spend money in the EU to stop pro-consumer
legislation as effectively as they do in the house and senate. So we're stuck
with out of date legislation.

I just hope that this is Google being desperate and trying to use PR to stop
the new data protection guidelines because their lobbying efforts are
faltering.

~~~
nraynaud
I always assumed that the mess that is the EU (I mean 27 countries, 24
official languages) would somehow be protecting it from corporate lobbying. I
guess I was wrong, everybody speaks english in Brussels.

------
bowlofpetunias
As a EU citizen it truly pisses me off that American corporations lobby
against our _civil rights protections_.

I consider this a much better reason to boycot American online services than
the NSA crap. The NSA "only" infringed on our rights, Google e.a. are actively
trying to destroy them entirely.

------
magicalist
Actual blog post:

> _The other big surprise of 2013 was something that didn 't happen. Europe's
> much-ballyhooed, and much-flawed, proposal to re-write its privacy laws for
> the next twenty years collapsed. The old draft is dead, and something else
> will eventually be resurrected in its place. We'll have to wait until 2014,
> or perhaps even later, to learn what will replace it. Whatever comes next
> will be the most important privacy legislation in the world, setting the
> global standards. I'm hopeful that this pause will give lawmakers time to
> write a better, more modern and more balanced law._

[http://peterfleischer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/turning-our-
bac...](http://peterfleischer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/turning-our-backs-
on-2013.html)

not all that exciting

------
einhverfr
My first thought was "The NSA is behind this."

The sad thing is, that was my second thought too.

The gist of the article seems to be the EU nations have dragged their feet
regarding implementing the law. That's to be expected, and variations are to
be expected too. But that hardly makes it dead in my view.

~~~
Fuxy
EU nations always drag their feet nothing new here. That's probably the
largest complaint people have about them.

The surprising thing is that the EU is ahead in the privacy initiative not the
US.

The US are not even considering it and instead they are wasting time getting
nations to agreed to a even longer copyright length.

Sadly the US has been bought by corporations and nothing important for the
citizens but potentially damaging for corporations will ever pass.

It's more like the United Corporation of America not the United States of
America.

~~~
StavrosK
Why is that surprising? If anything, it's completely expected.

------
morkbot
1st thing EU should do is to quit the Safe Harbor fiction, preferably by
walking out from that deal.

------
hipsters_unite
I just fail to see how it is 'dead' when all the key EU players intend to move
forward with it before the elections.

------
yuhong
Personally, I like to try to trace what is happening inside Google when things
like this happen. That is why I wrote several comments mentioning Vic Gundotra
for example.

------
awk23
I'm surprised of much of the comments here, I'll chalk it up to ignorance, but
every start up and company in the world should be wishing for this EU privacy
fundamentalism to die. And grandstanding politician to get in grips with
reality. Yeah NSA and some other state actors have done fucked up but that law
does nothing to curtail government surveillance it instead introduces
unreasonable limits and restrictions on innovation and even basic function.
Indirectly balkanize data flow and introducing more cookies law style useless
notices is the least of it. It's seemingly vindictive against US companies and
an miscalculated move to grant an advantage to local ones disguised as reform.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
I live in the EU and I rather we keep our direction on privacy, than you very
much. I agree that the law about cookies is not much use, but neither is
saying that we should just give up on this. I don't see this as vindictive, I
see it as I, and many with me, don't want our private data handled the way
most US companies want to do it. So we move our business to companies that do
it the way we want it done.

~~~
ZoFreX
> I agree that the law about cookies is not much use

Have you actually read the law in question? It seems fairly sensible to me,
it's the implementation guidance that was ridiculous. The banners we have at
the top of every page now are nothing but cargo cult, everyone copying what
everyone else is doing without ever applying any critical thinking.

~~~
seabee
I think it is less cargo-cult and more nobody wants to be sued over something
they don't really understand so they choose the (dumbest) option with the
least risk that still lets them do what they want.

