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Google destroying huge amounts of indentifying information
By admin | March 15, 2007
Google will erase personal information on billions of internet searches in an attempt to secure the privacy of its users, the company has announced.
As the search engine is currently being sued for $1 billion by Viacom for alleged copywright infringement, it has stated that it will erase major amounts of identifying information which is accesable through the internet. (e.g who did what search etc)
A lawyer for Google, said: “We believe that privacy is one of the cornerstones of trust. We will be retroactively going back into our log database and anonymising all the information there.”
UK organisations are legally bound to hold such data for at least a year to allow police to trawl through it if they need access. Mr Fleischer said requests for information from governments and law enforcement were a “routine matter” but denied that the new policy was specifically intended to prevent government access to private information.
Last year Google successfully challenged an attempt by the US government to force internet companies to reveal their databases. The White House claimed it wanted access to records of internet searches to identify terrorist suspects, in what Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, called “a complete violation of our users’ rights”.
more here on The Guardian
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Topics: news, internet, google, life, random-thoughts |
