Inside Google

A coalition of privacy groups and other advocates are asking the Federal Trade Commission to probe whether online health marketers engage in deceptive practices by tracking users across the Web in order to serve them targeted ads.

QualityHealth is one of a number of companies cited in the complaint to the F.T.C. filed by four nonprofit privacy and consumer advocacy groups. In the complaint, the Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog and the World Privacy Forum charged that online marketing of medications, products and medical services posed fundamental new risks to consumer privacy and health because of sophisticated data collection and patient-profiling techniques.

There are fears, oft-discounted but still harbored by at least one Israeli intelligence official, that terrorists might use Google Street View to plan terrorist attacks. If so, Google’s offices in Munich are safer today, because they are blurred in Google Street View, according to CNET’s Technically Incorrect.

The Obama administration is advancing plans for strengthening the federal government’s ability to monitor the Internet.

Google tells the public its results have “no manual intervention” and result “solely” from “completely automated” “computer algorithms” that “reflect the popular opinion of the Web” “completely objectively”. It’s a lofty promise, but is it true?

Ardent Google critic Consumer Watchdog has called on Congress to hold hearings on a major privacy breach by the Internet search engine giant, and insists that CEO Eric Schmidt should come to Washington to testify.

Consumer Watchdog, one of Google’s most persistent critics called on the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday to hold a hearing into the firm’s Wi-Fi data collection controversy, citing a discrepancy in a Google official’s testimony on the matter during a Senate hearing in June.

Two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation of online search giant Google’s Street View mapping project without taking action, another government agency is picking up where the FTC left off. Meanwhile, Consumer Watchdog on Thursday requested a congressional investigation and testimony under oath from Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Alma Whitten, the company’s director of privacy for engineering and product management.

CEO Schmidt Should Go To Washington Under Oath

SANTA MONICA, CA – Consumer Watchdog today asked the House Energy and Commerce Committee to hold hearings into Google’s Wi-Spying because a ranking employee of the Internet giant gave testimony that contradicted known facts about the company’s massive privacy invasion.

People who worry about online privacy and the intrusive practices of Internet companies like Google and Facebook are trying to figure out the impact of the election. One victim of the Republican juggernaut was a key Internet policy player, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. I don’t think his fall will slow the mounting drive to protect privacy. It will, however, mean one less pair of friendly ears on the Hill where Google lobbyists can whisper their policy goals.