Google accused over privacy law

Privacy groups are accusing Google of Violating California law in its reluctance to provide a direct link to its privacy policy on its home page. The search engine Giants is being asked to write the world “privacy” alongside other information links.

“It’s a Short, seven letter word and in the world of privacy it’s a very important word”, said beth Given of Privacy rights cleaning house.

Google says it’s policy is easy to find an it gives “accessible information”. The issue has been building momentum following a series of Blogs in the New York times questioning Google’s Compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection act of 2003.

The law requires any commercial website that collects personal information about its users to “conspicuously post its privacy policy on its website.

Google maintains that is already does and that its privacy policy can be found by going through its search engine or by clicking on “about Google”.

In a conference call, a coalition of privacy organizations told journalist. The groups involved include the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the World privacy forum, consumer action, the Electronic Frontier foundation and the ACLU of Northern California.

Ms Givens, of privacy rights Clearinghouse, said : I went through the exercise of finding (Google’s) privacy policy and it’s not easy.

It’s not intuitive and it’s not a couple of clicks. You have to work at it.

“the Google privacy policy prints out to 5 pages. It’s something I think they would be proud to point to. It’s a hefty privacy policy.

Mark Rotenberg of the Electronics Privacy Information Center in Washington said : this is not rocked science. The word “privacy” is not going to take up a lot of space on the Google homepage.

Sumber : BBC