Germany Asks Google to Surrender Private Data
This will be interesting to watch.
Google head Eric Schmidt recently said that having people’s private data in their hands was better than a government. Google says they follow local laws, but their China decision indicates that they’ll pick up and leave when their principles are violated (or firewalls.)
This case should be interesting, and a landmark, for many reasons:
- The data in question Google collected by snooping on personal WiFi networks while collecting images for Street View. This is in violation of Germany’s privacy laws, not to mention ethically iffy (creepy, at least.)
- The data is that of Google users, we can safely assume based on their ubiquity. So handing it back rather than just deleting it might violate some sort of ethical principle Google has; at the least it sets a dangerous precedent for them: they’ll have handed over personal data to a government because of a legal request.
- Google snooped on networks everywhere Street View exists! Is your house on Street View? Is your wifi network open? Google might have some traffic of yours… Other states could just as easily request this data from Google, especially if they hand it over to Germany. So the stakes are high if they hand it over.
- What happens if Google doesn’t surrender it? Can they afford to pull out of Germany? With the recent sell-off of GOOG shares, this doesn’t seem like the greatest idea.
Thoughts?
Source: The New York Times
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