Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FBI and DEA are now making extensive use of Google Earth, according to federal spending records. Consumer Watchdog is filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the agencies today to determine how the Internet giant’s digital mapping technology is being used for domestic surveillance, including whether it is used for racial profiling or other abuses of civil liberties.
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Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, however, said that while the new broadband proposal “pays lip service to the idea of net neutrality,” it would actually “completely undermine the open and free Internet we enjoy.” John M. Simpson, consumer advocate with the nonpartisan, nonprofit public interest group, said there are two main problems with the proposal.
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Digital rights advocacy groups took a cautious view of the deal. John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog said: “Apparently Google redefines principles to suit the business need of the moment… What Google and Verizon are trying to do is carve up the Internet behind closed doors for their own benefit.” The deal comes after the Federal Communications Commission disbanded talks on net neutrality, saying that it had failed to create an agreement on a ‘robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the internet’.
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Nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog portrayed any compromise by Google on net neutrality as a betrayal. “Apparently Google redefines principles to suit the business need of the moment,” said John Simpson, a consumer advocate with the group. “What Google and Verizon are trying to do is carve up the Internet behind closed doors for their own benefit.”
Press Release
SANTA MONICA, CA — Google is compromising a long standing principle it claimed to support in an effort to boost profits as it backs away from a key premise of an open Internet — “net neutrality,” Consumer Watchdog said today.
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According to a new poll from Consumer Watchdog a major part of Americans are very concerned about the privacy issues arousing from Google’s Street View data collection. Much covered reports about Google’s gathering private information from users’ WiFi networks make US consumers doubt in the efficiency of privacy protection measures implemented today, they want better privacy protections put in place.
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Web consumers are concerned about Google’s collection of data over wireless networks, but still give the search engine and Web services provider a favorable rating of 74 percent. That’s the latest from a poll conducted by Google watchers Consumer Watchdog and Grove Insight, which also found citizens are concerned about their privacy.
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Google has also come under scrutiny from Consumer Watchdog, which has said that the Energy and Commerce Committee must conduct hearings into Google privacy violations, with information coming to light about Google’s classified contracts with the US government. Consumer Watchdog suggests that Google has been fibbing.
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Google Inc. has missed the deadline on its high-profile contract to take over Los Angeles’ e-mail system, leaving nearly 20,000 city employees on an aging system that the city is paying the Internet search giant $7.25 million to replace.
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At the hearing, a consumer watchdog testified that he believed the White House was too cozy with Google, and the company’s lobbying interests. “I do think that Google specifically has perhaps too close a relationship with the government,” said John Simpson, director of the Stem Cell Project. “I think Mr. McLaughlin’s appointment is one of those ties that are inappropriate.”
