Watchdog: Google breaching Dutch privacy law

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A privacy watchdog said Thursday that Google has been breaching Dutch law on personal data protection since it introduced a new privacy policy last year.

Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the College for the Protection of Personal Data, said that Google's combining of data from different services, including surfing multiple websites, to tailor ads and personalize services like YouTube "spins an invisible web of our personal information, without our permission, and that is outlawed."

In a statement, the watchdog said Google, "does not adequately inform users about the combining of their personal data from all these different services."

It added that consent, required by Dutch law, for the combining of personal data from different Google services "cannot be obtained by accepting general (privacy) terms of service."

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20131128/DAABQDRG2.html

[FarrenH]

2. The violation being described isn't the infringement of privacy as such

so much as the failure to acquire informed consent. IOW, google can ask for that consent in return for using their services, and get it, but they aren't doing that, in terms of Dutch law.

I don't know Dutch law, but I'm guessing its similar to the law of South Africa, which is where I live, in that a simple agreement to a EULA isn't enough if someone can reasonably make the argument that understanding the ramifications of the contract require knowledge not contained in the contract (like getting people to agree to use of data by "affiliates", for instance, where its not common knowledge what those affiliates are), or that the language of the contract can be shown to have different denotations as legal jargon to its colloquial meaning, and requires someone to have legal training to spot the differences. IOW the properly "informed" part of "informed consent"