Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill publicly blasted Google and Facebook for violating user privacy during her talk Tuesday morning at a cybersecurity forum in Washington D.C., saying the companies “learned it the hard way” from the FTC that they should not change user privacy settings without getting expressed, affirmative approval from users.
Ironically, Brill’s comments were broadcast live to the Web on Facebook’s DC page, which was livestreaming the forum.
“We called Facebook out for promises it made but did not keep,” Brill said in her prepared statement, “It told users it wouldn’t share information with advertisers, and then it did; and it agreed to take down photos and videos of users who had deleted their accounts, and then it did not.”
“Our enforcement actions in the privacy area are also a call to industry to put important
privacy principles into practice,” Brill added.
By “enforcement actions,” Brill was referring to previous FTC investigations into and settlements with both Google and Facebook.
Each company reached a separate but similar agreement with the FTC in 2011 to undergo 20-years of independent privacy audits for privacy scandals involving social networking.
Google was investigated by the FTC over its short-lived, failed Google Buzz social network, which automatically appeared in Gmail and shared way more information than many users were comfortable with. Facebook was investigated by the FTC over its 2009 redesign and privacy settings overhaul, which began publicly sharing more user information by default, including information users had previously set to private.
Both companies dodged fines or other harsher penalties for the privacy failures, but in addition to the audits, the FTC required each company to begin developing its own internal privacy program to ensure it would not violate user privacy going forward.
“The proposed FTC settlement with Facebook prohibits the company from misrepresenting the privacy and security settings it provides to consumers,” Brill said.
“Like Facebook, Google settled our complaint,” Brill went on. “And like Facebook, Google is also required to implement a comprehensive privacy program and to obtain periodic assessments that will examine how well the privacy program is put into practice.”
But during a brief Q-and-A session following her talk, Brill dodged the big question on everyone’s minds these days: What the FTC is doing about Google’s recent changes, including putting user-generated content from its new social network, Google Plus, front and center in Google Search results, and combining all of its separate privacy policies into one master meta-privacy policy that will for the first time formally allow the company to use and combine user data across its all of its products — from Google Plus to Search to YouTube to Gmail, etc.
“Like others, we’ve followed what’s been announced in the press,” Brill said of Google’s recent changes, “We do have an outstanding consent order with Google, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment about it at this time. But it is something that is certainly of interest to us.”
Google in June 2011 confirmed that the FTC had launched a separate anti-trust investigation into the company, and Bloomberg this month reported that Google was being investigated over the recent Google Search Plus Your World changes.
Brill also laid-out an alarming vision of the near future where all social networking data could be scraped and sold to banks and insurers to allow them to determine a person’s likely behavior, and called upon Web companies that capture user data to develop a “one-stop shop” for users to be able to see and change that data.
As she wrote:
Analysts are undoubtedly working right now to identify certain Facebook or Twitter habits or activities as predictive of behaviors relevant to whether a person is a ― “good” or “trustworthy” employee, or is likely to pay back a loan. Might there not be a day very soon, when these analysts offer to sell information scraped from social networks to current and potential employers to be used to determine whether you’ll get a job or promotion? Or to the bank where you’ve applied for a loan, to help it determine whether to give you the loan, and on what terms?I am calling on data brokers to take the transparency principle and put it into practice. Develop a user friendly one-stop shop where consumers can gain access to information that data brokers have amassed about them and, in appropriate circumstances, can correct that information. Data brokers need to get cracking now to put something like this into place.
The forum at George Washington University Law School was held in advance of “Data Privacy Day,” an annual international effort (“celebration”) by governments and tech companies held every January 28 to promote education and awareness of cybersecurity and data privacy.
The effort was launched in 2007 by the the Council of Europe, a diplomatic organization separate from the European Union, but has since expanded to many countries around the globe, including the United States.
Carl Franzen
Carl Franzen is TPM Idea Lab's tech reporter. He used to work for The Daily, AOL and The Atlantic Wire (though not simultaneously, thankfully). He's never met a button that didn't need to be pressed. He can be reached at carl@talkingpointsmemo.com.
hennessy.reynolds interesting, so the censorship is because of percieved gang affiliation? What happened?
Also, I bet you know where to get the best food.
Post some links to some of those articles that you write. They sound very interesting. I'd love to read them and get an inside look into the underground gangster and Mexican communities in Los Angeles. I'm serious: that's the sort of underground news that's hard to come by and I'd be a regular reader. Thanks!
hennessy.reynolds
Interesting times we live in... our societies are largely built on secrets: from black government ops to corporate strategies and industrial trade secrets to our own individual salaries, tax exemptions and personal relationships, the great majority of us have a vested interested in a non-transparent, non-open society. And yet, we also seem to have, collectively at least, a great desire to know and to probe for those secrets. And all the while, we don't really know what we're doing or why, but the symptoms and the effects of all this exist nonetheless...
The truth is, we are frightened of transparency, as much as we say we value it, and in the darkness of secretiveness we find a kind of comfort... illusory comfort, because as FlyingSquid said, the truth comes out eventually. But the fact is that we'll continue to cling to deception and half-truths as long as human egos believe that they have something to lose by being fully truthful, or that there is something to gain by withholding some facts...
kunda311
"You had something to hide
You should have hidden it shouldn't you...
Now its time to pay the price
For not listening to advice
And deciding in your youth
On the policy of truth.
Its too late to change events
Its time to face the consequence
Of delivering the proof
In the policy of truth."
-Depeche Mode
xxcliffxx very appropriate - love DM and that song. thanks =)
At least two occurrences of the word "piracy" where the word "privacy" was presumably intended.
Pretty major difference...
About time. Facebook is just as bad as SOPA and PIPA in that it is censoring the web and violating internet user privacy.
TotalRecall9 Yeah, Facebook is totally DNS blocking Chinese websites.
Or... not in the slightest bit.
Probably also why they were so slow in speaking out against them...big glass house, lots of rocks.
JJRothery Then what's Twitter's excuse?
I think people really need to realize that privacy, in general, is an illusion. And no, that doesn't mean that the FTC shouldn't go after Facebook and Google, but let's be real here, if you have a cell phone or even just a debit card, people can already very easily get pretty much any information they want about you if they're willing to pay for it. You can even be tracked most of the time via a cell phone you're carrying without GPS by triangulating the unique signal the phone makes between cell towers... and just wait until all those little helicopters they sell in malls come equipped with cameras and wifi.
Flying Squid Agreed. All you can do to curtail it is make sure you establish your privacy settings accordingly and keep checking them regularly.
Ultimately we're all "tracked" in some fashion or another, even if you don't use social networking systems. It's up to you as the end user to be diligent about what's left out there for people to see.
FACEBOOK is the biggest liar in terms of the Internet debate. People who have different political opinions or lifestyles tend to be kicked off FACEBOOK by Conservative Right-Wing bloggers by complaining about content that they don't agree with. Another medium is the the British GUARDIAN newspaper or www.Guardian.co.uk & the British Independent newspaper or www.Independent.co.uk who also kick bloggers off if they have different views or lifestyles. GOOGLE the search engine is the latest to fall to Conservative Right-Wing groups especially FOX News & Rupert Murdoch who don't want a transparent American society because they want everyone to be repressed hold no opinions. As a White woman in the media industry in Los Angeles, I have a Mexican CHOLO GANGSTER boyfriend with a shaved head & tattoos & love to write what is going on in the underground CHOLO GANGSTER & Mexican communities of Los Angeles California. Most of these White Right-Wing Conservative bloggers & commentators don't care what happens to Minorities & the Poor in this country. As a Liberal Democrat White women, I hope President Obama, the FCC & the US Justice Department go after GOOGLE, FACEBOOK & others to try to limit the FREEDOM OF SPEECH or FIRST AMENDMENT which Conservative Republicans want to HIJACK!!!
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