Lawmakers crank up the heat on Google

GOOGLE   DIGITAL   PRIVACY 

Global - The fallout over Google's new privacy policy is mounting in the US with a group of eight lawmakers questioning how the search giant will use the data it plans to collect.

Since Google announced Tuesday it was consolidating its privacy policies into one main policy allowing it to track users across all its products and services, lawmakers and public interest groups raised alarms.

Congress representative Ed Markey, co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said he plans to ask the US Federal Trade Commission over Google's new privacy policy changes and whether it violates a settlement it made with Google in March last year about its Google Buzz product.

Markey is one of eight members that fired off a letter to Google's CEO Larry Page with a long list of questions about what the search giant is doing to protect consumers' privacy rights.

In a letter, lawmakers stressed the importance of Google allowing consumers the ability to opt out of the policy, which goes into effect 1  March.

"We believe that consumers should have the ability to opt out of data collection when they are not comfortable with a company's terms of service and that the ability to exercise that choice should be simple and straightforward," wrote the lawmakers.

Google has until 16 February to respond to questions about how it will use the information it collects, who has access to it, whether it will be sold, how long Google will keep the data, whether there are specific provisions to protect children and teens, and how Android users will be affected.

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