Google ranks bottom for privacy in NGO survey, sparking war of words

Stan Beer
Monday, 11 June 2007 13:57

Your IT - Home IT

Google has been ranked as the company most hostile to privacy in a survey looking into the privacy practices of 23 leading Internet organizations. The survey, from UK-based not-for-profit privacy advocacy group Privacy International (PI), has sparked a war of words through the media between Google and the group.

In its report, A Race to the Bottom: Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies, PI ranked Google as an organization with "comprehensive consumer surveillance & entrenched hostility to privacy", the only company to receive the bottom of the scale ranking.

Other organizations to receive low marks for privacy, but still ranked ahead of Google, included Apple, AOL, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft's Windows Live Space. Those organizations were ranked as having "substantial and comprehensive privacy threats". Microsoft ranked two rungs higher than Google but was still considered to be an organization with "serious lapses in privacy practices".

The lowest on the scale ranking, together with the fact that Microsoft fared substantially better than Google in the survey, has caused a war of words to erupt between PI and Google. PI has accused Google of conducting a smear campaign against the group and has published an open letter written to the search company.

In the letter addressed to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, PI director Simon Davies accuses Google of trying to discredit the group by contacting the media and claiming that PI has confict of interest regarding Microsoft.

In the letter, Davies writes:

"Two European journalists have independently told us that Google representatives have contacted them with the claim that "Privacy International has a conflict of interest regarding Microsoft"."

Davies also writes:

"According to our sources, your representative or representatives made particular reference to one member of our 70-member international Advisory Board. This man is a current employee of Microsoft. I can confirm that he joined our Advisory Board well before he was headhunted by Microsoft. At the time he was the director of a leading UK non-governmental organization and had more than six years extensive involvement in the work of Privacy International. He is a decent, skilled and honorable man who upon his appointment with Microsoft offered us his resignation. We refused to accept it, and he continues to serve on the Board in a private capacity. As an exceptionally skilled IT and security expert he is a superb resource in our day-to-day work across many fields of privacy. To infer that he in any way influences our decisions with regard to Microsoft is not just inaccurate but it is also insulting."

Meanwhile, according to an Associated Press report Google's associate general counsel, Nicole Wong, has criticized PI saying it is based on inaccuracies and misunderstandings. Ms Wong also criticized PI for publishing the report without giving Google a chance to explain its privacy policies first. In turn, PI director Simon Davies claimed that the group contacted Google prior to publishing the report but didn't receive a response.