Google Under Fire for 'Breathtaking' Hypocrisy, New Report Shows Just How Much Personal...

Google Under Fire for 'Breathtaking' Hypocrisy, New Report Shows Just How Much
Personal Information is Available Through Google Street View

Google: "Privacy does not exist."

WASHINGTON, July 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Google is under fire for
issuing contradictory statements on privacy: In California, Google responded
to California State Assemblyman Joel Anderson's (R-San Diego) concerns about
Google's privacy policies yesterday by stating that "Google takes privacy very
seriously."

However, in Pennsylvania court documents released the same day, Google stated
"privacy does not exist." Google's privacy statements yesterday came on the
heels of comments by Google "Evangelist" Vint Cerf to the Washington
Technology Alliance's annual luncheon in May where he explained that "nothing
you do ever goes away, and nothing you do ever escapes notice... There isn't
any privacy, get over it."

In response to an invasion of privacy lawsuit from Aaron and Christine Boring
in Pennsylvania, Google stated yesterday, "Today's satellite-image technology
means that even in today's desert, complete privacy does not exist." Google's
court filing noted that "every step upon private property is not deemed by law
to be an actionable trespass." The Boring's lawsuit was prompted by a "Google
vehicle--outfitted with a 360 degree panoramic camera on its roof--driving
down a private road to take images of their Oakridge Lane home." Google
conceded that the photos were taken during a "brief entry upon their
driveway."

Ken Boehm, Chairman of National Legal and Policy Center, responded, "Perhaps
in Google's world privacy does not exist, but in the real world individual
privacy is fundamentally important and is being chipped away bit by bit every
day by companies like Google. Google's hypocrisy is breathtaking."

To demonstrate his point, the National Legal and Policy Center today released
a document demonstrating the threat to personal privacy posed by Google and
Google products. Simply using Google Street View and Google Earth, the Center
compiled a startlingly comprehensive amount of personal information on a top
Google executive in less than 30 minutes, including the license plates of cars
outside the executive's home, the landscaping company the executive uses and
even the name of the next door neighbor's home security company.

The report also includes the distance from the street to the executive's front
door, the most likely driving route the executive would take to Google's
Mountain View headquarters and photos of the stop signs, stoplights and
intersections the executive would pass along the way. The Center is publicly
releasing the document today to highlight the invasiveness of these Google
technologies to individual privacy.

"There is no better evidence that individual privacy simply does not exist in
Google's world than by the chilling amount of detailed visual information
Google now collects on all of us, information that any Internet user can now
compile in a dossier in less than 30 minutes. The fact that every American is
now subject to this type of scrutiny with the click of a mouse is
frightening."

The National Legal and Policy Center is a not-for-profit organization focused
on ethics and accountability in public life and private business. The
organization is a strong supporter of property rights and has become
increasingly alarmed at how technologies like Google's Street, Google Earth
and other Internet technologies have eroded American's fundamental right to
privacy.

You can view the Google Street View document at:
http://www.nlpc.org/pdfs/googleexecutive.pdf

You can read the more from the court filing at:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0730081google1.html

You can read more on Assemblyman Joel Anderson's exchange with Google, Yahoo,
and Attorney General Jerry Brown here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10001692-93.html

SOURCE National Legal and Policy Center

Ken Boehm, +1-703-237-1970, for the National Legal and Policy Center