PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

high-tech technology background with eyes on computer display

Is the Right to Be Forgotten Good or Bad? This Is the Wrong Question

by Daniel J. Solove Is the right to be forgotten good or bad? This is the question many are asking these days in light of the recent EU Court of Justice (ECJ) decision that requires search engines such as Google to remove personal data from search results when people request it. (For more background, I […]

What Google Must Forget: The EU Ruling on the Right to Be Forgotten

  by Daniel J. Solove In a momentous decision, the EU Court of Justice has ruled in favor of a Spanish man who sought to have links to his personal data removed from Google search results. Under what has become known as the “right to be forgotten,” EU citizens have a right to the deletion […]

Criminalizing Google’s YouTube in Italy

YouTube Peter Fleischer Criminal Prosecution in Italy

In Italy, a rather disturbing prosecution is taking place. Google officials, including Chief Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, are being criminally prosecuted for a video somebody else uploaded to YouTube. According to an article by Tracey Bentley in the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ The Privacy Advisor:

Google’s Street View and Privacy

Google Street View

Google has added a new feature in selected cities to Google Maps. This new feature allows users to view street level shots of each block. For a long time, Google Maps has provided satellite images from above, but Street View allows people to view an area as if standing on the sidewalk. From the NY Times:

The Google Subpoena Case: A Google Victory

Google Subpoena and Privacy Case

On Friday, Judge James Ware, a U.S. District Judge in San Jose, CA, issued a decision in Gonzales v. Google, Inc., No. CV 06-8006MISC JW (Mar. 17, 2006), the case involving a government subpoena for Google search queries. A few days before Judge Ware released his opinion, he stated that he would be ordering Google to […]

Government vs. Google

Google Subpoena and Privacy Case

According to the AP: Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration’s demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet’s leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance. Mountain View-based Google has refused to comply with a White […]

Should Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Help China Filter Searches?

China Internet Shaming

An interesting article from Salon discusses how Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft assist the Chinese government with censorship. The companies filter out search results that the government wants to censor, and they help the government track down individuals engaging in criticism and dissent:

Google’s Empire, Privacy, and Government Access to Personal Data

Google Subpoena and Privacy Case

A New York Times editorial observes: At a North Carolina strangulation-murder trial this month, prosecutors announced an unusual piece of evidence: Google searches allegedly done by the defendant that included the words “neck” and “snap.” The data were taken from the defendant’s computer, prosecutors say. But it might have come directly from Google, which – unbeknownst to […]