They’re at it again. And the Spanish government are none too pleased with the results.
The search giant is involved in yet another legal wrangle over protection of citizenry data online after a ‘tsunami’ of complaints.
Their over-zealous search results appear to be showing up too much – of the wrong thing for many people.
The battle involving Spain’s Agency of Data Protection and Google, stems from the country’s request to remove links on its search engine to sites that could potentially affect an individual’s right to privacy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The agency, following complaints from citizens, sent 90 requests to the tech giant to remove such potentially compromising material from their search results.
Google, however refused, claiming news providers and other such orgs have not been asked to remove such information, as is common practice in other countries, thus should be entitled to the same protection.
This is the not the only case the Spanish government are taking against techs – Facebook and MySpace are also on their hit list also.
Artemi Rallo, the agency head, has previously confirmed a ‘tsunami’ of privacy complaints about privacy issues with Google exist, with a 75% rise in 2009 alone, according to the report.
Spain isn’t the only country to take Google to task over privacy concerns – Australian police found Google in breached privacy laws last year when it collected information from home Wi-Fi networks but said that the breach was inadvertent.
The European Union is also working on stronger data protection rules to give Internet users more control over how search engines use their personal information.
Google, probably the biggest oogler in the world, is aware of user’s complete cache of online activities, especially since the level of tasks that can be completed online has soared.
Everything from searches, phone calls, web chats, emails (Gmail) buying patterns to its Maps that takes images of your house allows it to potentially monitor every movement.
It’s mission statement, “to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful,” appears to be proving too
successful, and it seems not everyone is happy with the ‘useful’ results.
The test case is due for hearing tommorrow.
