EU tells Google that privacy policy could violate laws, asks for delay

Washington Post

(KIMIHIRO HOSHINO – AFP/GETTY IMAGES) European regulators on Tuesday warned Google that its new privacy policy set to take effect Thursday appears to violate privacy rules, and they asked the search giant to delay the changes.

In a letter to Google chief executive Larry Page, France’s data protection agency (CNIL) officials said on behalf of European Union members that, after a preliminary review of the company’s privacy policy changes, “Google’s new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection.”

In a response to the letter, Google declined to delay the launch of the new policy and said it has been reaching out to regulators.

“Over the past month we have asked to meet with the CNIL on several occasions to answer any questions they might have, and that offer remains open,” a Google spokesman wrote in a letter to the commission. “We believe we’ve found a reasonable balance between the Working Party’s recommendations: to “streamline and simplify” our policies while providing “comprehensive information” to users.

But the spokesman said the company would go ahead with its privacy changes because it had notified more than 350 million Google users, and “to pause now would cause a great deal of confusion for users.”

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