Google has changed its homepage, providing a link to its privacy policy “Privacy Center” on the homepage. So ends one of the highest dramas to grip the privacy world in a generation. I’m being facetious.
On the Google Blog, Marissa Mayer explains how Google has long been careful not to crowd its homepage – and remains so: they took a word out before including “privacy” – ummm, actually “privacy”. Google had come under fire recently for not having a link to its privacy policy on the homepage, a triviality that I wrote about here and here.
Would that this were the end of Google’s privacy troubles though. It is still a fiendish violator of the law. The facetiousness continues.
The privacy legislation California passed in 2003 requires a thing that Google still contemptuously refuses. Google must “conspicuously post” its privacy policy on its Web site, yet it has decided that it will not, flouting the will of the people’s representatives.
Here’s what it means to “conspicuously post” under the California statute:
(b) The term “conspicuously post” with respect to a privacy policy
shall include posting the privacy policy through any of the
following:
(1) A Web page on which the actual privacy policy is posted if the
Web page is the homepage or first significant page after entering
the Web site.
(2) An icon that hyperlinks to a Web page on which the actual
privacy policy is posted, if the icon is located on the homepage or
the first significant page after entering the Web site, and if the
icon contains the word “privacy.” The icon shall also use a color
that contrasts with the background color of the Web page or is
otherwise distinguishable.
(3) A text link that hyperlinks to a Web page on which the actual
privacy policy is posted, if the text link is located on the homepage
or first significant page after entering the Web site, and if the
text link does one of the following:
(A) Includes the word “privacy.”
(B) Is written in capital letters equal to or greater in size than
the surrounding text.
(C) Is written in larger type than the surrounding text, or in
contrasting type, font, or color to the surrounding text of the same
size, or set off from the surrounding text of the same size by
symbols or other marks that call attention to the language.
Google’s posting meets none of these standards.
The privacy policy is not on the home page or first significant page, so (1) is a no-go. Google doesn’t use an icon so (2) is right out. Following the privacy link brings you to the “Google Privacy Center,” from which you have to click yet again to reach the privacy policy. Meaning: Google doesn’t meet the standards of (3), which requires “[a] text link that hyperlinks to a Web page on which the actual privacy policy is posted.”
In other words, all this show of providing a link to their privacy policy is a subterfuge designed by Google to obscure their information policies from the public. (Facetious! Remember?)
Can we just repeal California’s stupid privacy legislation now? (Not facetious!)
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.