Google’s new privacy policy starts today, EU says it is Illegal

In January Google announced changes that would be taking effect to the privacy policy for all of its users and sites. The policy was then said to roll out and be official on March 1st. Today is that day and the policy went out on schedule with no hiccups, but it is still a topic of debate around the globe. Not just debate, but legal threats.

According to the EU, the privacy policy directly violates European law in a number of ways. EU’s Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said, “One is that nobody had been consulted, it is not in accordance with the law on transparency and it utilizes the data of private persons in order to hand it over to third parties, which is not what the users have agreed to.” It goes beyond just the EU though. The French are also getting involved and is doing an investigation on behalf of the EU. Saying that the privacy policy violates the European Data Protection Directive. Both entities are deeply concerned about the amount of data that is collected across all of Google’s services, and they plan to continue the investigation with the help of Google representatives.

The buck doesn’t stop with international law though. Here in the states the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a suit against the Federal Trade Commission, stating that the new policy violates a consent order tat Google signed in March of 2011 after the Google Buzz controversy.

The single most important aspect of their complaints is based on time. French regulators wrote a letter to Google stating that they didn’t give inform relevant authorities quickly enough and that it is impossible for the average user to understand the new policy in such a short amount of time. They also fear that general consumers don’t understand what is happening because the policy out line is published in general terms with little specifics.

A Google spokes person address this issue in a statement to Ars this morning, “We are confident that our new simple, clear and transparent privacy policy respects all European data protection laws and principles. It provides all the information required in Articles 10 & 11 of the directive, plus much additional information, and it follows the guidelines published by the Article 29 Working Party in 2004.”

You can find the NEW privacy policy outlines on any service that is Google owned. Over the last month or so, many of you have seen the pop up that alerted you to a new policy, but I assume many of you closed it instead of checking it out. What are your thoughts on the new policy? Are they for the better or the worse?

Source: Arstechnica