Press Release
SANTA MONICA, CA – As Google today killed 60 separate “privacy” policies for its services and said it would now combine data between services despite widespread objection, Consumer Watchdog said the new unified policy isn’t a privacy policy; it is a “spy policy.”
Blog Post
Google is forging ahead with its plan to launch its new privacy and data handling policies this Thursday despite objections from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.
News Clipping
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.
News Clipping
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).
News Clipping
“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,” said John Simpson, privacy policy director of Consumer Watchdog, in a statement.
Press Release
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.
News Clipping
“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.
News Clipping
Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit research and advocacy group in California, said the approach will work only if influential companies don’t water down the rules to render them meaningless. “I am skeptical about the ’multi-stakeholder process,’ but am willing to make a good-faith effort to try,” said John M. Simpson, the group’s privacy project director. He’s referring to the various parties with competing interests tasked with making the rules.
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A coalition of 11 consumer advocacy agencies and civil liberty and privacy organizations has responded by releasing a set of principles for the multi-stakeholder process. This “would ensure a fair process,” John Simpson, consumer advocate at coalition member Consumer Watchdog, told TechNewsWorld.
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“This is an improvement from the current Wild West that is the mobile market,” said John M Simpson of the Californian Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project.
