Archive | Tag: lobbying

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In an effort to spur a Congressional investigation in the States, the consumer watchdog known as Consumer Watchdog has retraced Street View’s past Washington D.C. routes and found that various members of Congress have open Wi-Fi networks whose data may have been lifted by the Google cars. The watchdog wrote a letter to Representative Jane Harman, chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment and a former ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, telling her that Google may have lifted her personal info.

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We’re not sure what’s more humorous: That California Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, maintains two unencrypted Wi-Fi networks at her residence, or that a consumer group sniffed her unsecured traffic in a bid to convince lawmakers to hold hearings about Google.

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The report drew mixed reactions yesterday. The nonprofit Consumer Watchdog organization dismissed it as hype based on “cooked accounting” that counts benefits, but doesn’t consider the impact on some content providers and competitors who suffer from Google’s “monopolistic control of search.”

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The announcement drew an immediate response from a nonprofit consumer-advocacy organization, Consumer Watchdog. The group said Google’s motives in releasing the report were driven by “its attempts to quell worldwide outrage over the WiSpy scandal” and that this is “classic corporate PR spin to divert justified criticism.”

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At least one vocal critic of the company said the report overstates Google’s contributions. The company didn’t generate this economic activity so much as facilitate it, said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. There were other businesses that connected companies with customers before Google was founded 12 years ago, and the report failed to take into account lost revenue and jobs within those industries, notably media and advertising, he said.

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“I’m really incredulous,” said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. “What they are saying is the No. 1 and the No. 2 can combine, and it’s not a problem because there is a No. 3 over there that is now owned by Apple. I find that incomprehensible.”

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By browsing through several dozen emails now being posted by a consumer group, anyone can read for himself the chummy chatter that has been occurring for the past year between a couple of senior Google officers and White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, who headed Google’s global public policy unit until assuming his current post in May 2009.

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