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The recent incident involved a privacy group called Consumer Watchdog.
The organization and Google have had a history of run-ins. Consumer
Watchdog has been critical of Google in terms of privacy, and has been
aggressive at times in publicly challenging the search giant, as can be
seen in this video ironically documented on YouTube, which is owned by
Google.
Blog Post
In the face of criticism from privacy advocates, the White House website apparently has ended its ties to Google’s YouTube video service.
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Bob Boorstin, the director of Corporate and Policy Communications for Google, sent
a letter to the Rose Foundation blasting Consumer Watchdog, and, er,
asking that Rose defund them.
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Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court wrote to Google CEO Eric
Schmidt Monday arguing that his top executives must "have more
important priorities than defunding a consumer group critical of your
lack of privacy protections." In the letter, he laid out some
observations about Google’s perceived "less than open corporate
culture, its opaque public policymaking division and some suggestions
for change and moving forward."
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Search Giant Tries To Pull Consumer Watchdog’s Funding
The U.S. privacy and consumer protection group Consumer Watchdog today shot back at Google for allegedly trying to have its funding withdrawn.
Press Release
Washington, DC — Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court wrote
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt today questioning the company’s priorities
following efforts by one of Google’s top executives to dissuade a
charitable foundation from supporting the nonpartisan group’s privacy
efforts.
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Since winning the grant last August, Consumer Watchdog has challenged Google
privacy practices related to its Gmail electronic mail program and its
Chrome Web browser. Last month, the group accused Google of lobbying
Congress to weaken privacy protections for medical records stored in
its Google Health program. “Their business model is incompatible with privacy,” says Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog’s president.
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Bob Boorstin, Google’s Director of Corporate and Policy Communications,
issued a statement on Monday apologizing for sending information about
Consumer Watchdog to The Rose Foundation. Earlier on Monday, Consumer
Watchdog published the text of an email that Boorstin sent to the
foundation on February 9, in which he asked it to consider withdrawing
funding. Boorstin cited Consumer Watchdog’s campaign to highlight
Google’s alleged lobbying activities on Capitol Hill.
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No
one knows more about us—our ailments, significant others, favorite
music, what we’re thinking about buying, and how much we spend—than our
search engines. Virtually all search engines gather information about
how searchers query, what they click, and where they wind up. This
personal information (i.e., IP addresses, cookies, session IDs) is
stored alongside queries for anywhere between 90 days and forever. "I
think most users simply don’t realize the amount of personal
information they provide," says John M. Simpson, a consumer policy
advocate with the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog.
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Consumer advocacy groups, such as Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) and
Consumer Watchdog, warn that such online records could pose a threat to
patients’ health privacy rights. PPR says the most recent health IT
portion of the Senate version of the economic stimulus bill intoduces
loopholes that allow the sale and misuse of personal health information.
