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“Whenever Google raises the cry of defending Internet freedom, it’s always really about what’s best for Google’s business model,” John Simpson, consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog, told TechNewsWorld.
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SANTA MONICA, CA – Consumer Watchdog today demanded that the Federal Communications Commission release an uncensored version of its highly redacted decision to fine Google $25,000 for deliberately impeding and delaying its investigation of the Wi-Spy scandal.
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John Simpson with Consumer Watchdog, which along with Chester’s group and other privacy advocates is backing the EFF/Mozilla proposal, argues that the industry’s proposal “has so many loopholes it’s meaningless.”
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John M. Simpson, the director of Consumer Watchdog’s privacy project, said even if people understand what data they’re sharing on social networks, they don’t expect it to be “reconfigured so they can be hit upon. Just because something is technologically possible is no justification for necessarily doing it,” he said.
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California-based Google critic Consumer Watchdog called Google’s sweeping changes a “spy policy” rather than a privacy policy, an allusion to the fact that the move will help Google funnel data on users in one larger silo for targeted ads.
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WASHINGTON – As watchdog groups urge a slowdown in Google’s new privacy policy, Rep. Mary Bono Mack’s office announced Tuesday a hearing on privacy issues March 29 in which Google will likely participate.
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The letter was signed by Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), John Simpson, privacy policy director at Consumer Watchdog, Susan Grant, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), and Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG).
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five consumer and privacy groups today joined in sending a letter to the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade calling for public hearings on Google planned privacy changes, rather than a secret briefing.
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“The real question is how much influence companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook will have in their inevitable attempt to water down the rules that are implemented and render them essentially meaningless. I am skeptical about the ‘multi-stakeholder process’, but am willing to make a good faith effort to try,” John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog said in a statement.
Press Release
SANTA MONICA, CA – The Obama Administration’s blueprint to protect online privacy with a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” unveiled today could provide meaningful protections, Consumer Watchdog said, but warned that the test of its effectiveness will come as the implementation unfolds. The nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group also voiced a concern that an announced Internet industry commitment to honor “Do Not Track” could be aimed at undercutting an effort by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to create a strict Do Not Track standard.
