Update: EU Asks Google to ‘Pause’ New Privacy Policy
Friday, February 3rd, 2012Last week, Google announced changes in its privacy policies that will affect users of its services, such as search, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube. Advocates and legislators questioned the changes, saying that there were privacy issues, and criticized the Internet services giant (Congress pdf; archive pdf) for not including an opt-out provision; Google said that users who objected could stop using its services and move their data elsewhere. Google responded to the criticisms in a letter (pdf) to U.S. lawmakers and a blog post.
Now, the EU’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has written (Working Party pdf; archive pdf) to Google about the privacy policy, which affect 60 Google services. The Working Party includes data protection authorities from all 27 European Union member states as well as the European Data Protection Supervisor. Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Article 29 Working Party, writes:
We wish to check the possible consequences for the protection of the personal data of these citizens in a coordinated procedure. We have therefore asked the French data protection authority, the CNIL, to take the lead. The CNIL has kindly accepted this task and will be your point of contact for the data protection authorities in the EU. Read more »

