CNIL, the French data protection authority has requested Google to delay the proposed change in privacy policy for all its users in a letter to Larry Page. The letter said that the initial analysis by the French data protection authority has shown that the new privacy policy of Google does not comply with the standards of the European Directive on Data Protection (95/46/CE), mainly with regard to information given to data subjects.
CNIL has refuted claims by Google where it has claimed that all the data protection authorities across Europe had been extensively pre-briefed about the new privacy changes. CNIL said that the authorities that had been supposedly briefed in advance on Google’s proposed changes in privacy policy were only able to see the privacy policy just hours before it was released to the public.
Google has been urged by CNIL to make the wordings of the new terms of service clearer so as to comply with Articles 10 and 11 of the directive and to ensure transparency. CNIL claimed that the privacy policy in its current form does not clearly identify what data would actually be combined with the services offered by Google. CNIL added that even trained privacy professionals had trouble understanding the full impact of the new policy and the exact nature of the information which would be tracked by the company. A questionnaire will be sent to Google in the next two weeks on behalf of the Article 29 Working Party, said CNIL. CNIL was earlier asked to look into the privacy changes being brought about by Google by the Article 29 Working Party.
Europe is not the only place where concerns are being raised about the proposed changes in the privacy policy with as many as 37 well known lawyers in the United States requesting a special meeting with Larry Page, the CEO of Google, before the policy changes take effect tomorrow. They said that the company has carefully constructed their privacy policy to attract customers but is now holding the information hostage in their own ecosystem as per the new privacy policy.
Amidst all of this, Peter Fleischer, Google’s European privacy counsel has made it clear to CNIL that the company will definitely be going ahead with the privacy changes as planned.
