MoneyWatch Tech

Google Wants to Protect Your Privacy. Ha!

By Erik Sherman

Updated on: March 31, 2010 / 6:33 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Few companies have developed Google's (GOOG) reputation for disregarding personal privacy. The company collects all manner of data -- from your email, from your documents, from your online activities, from your location. And today, Google decided to take a stand. Against government invasion of privacy.

In a blog post, the company essentially said that it wanted to strike a blow for online freedom by pushing for changes in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act:

A lot has changed since 1986. Gas is now measured in dollars and Taylor Swift (born 1989) won album of the year. All the while, technology has moved at record pace. But ECPA has stayed the same. Originally designed to protect us from unwarranted government intrusion while ensuring that law enforcement had the tools necessary to protect public safety, it was written long before most people had heard of email, cell phones or the "cloud" -- the term used for programs helping people store personal data like photos and documents online. As a result, ECPA has become outdated.This is why we're proud to help establish Digital Due Process, a coalition of technology companies, civil rights organizations and academics seeking to update ECPA to provide privacy protections to new and emerging technologies.

Google then goes on to explain how it wants greater protection of online consumer data, location information, communications monitoring, and bulk data requests from government. What makes this entire post particularly amusing is that, as a company, Google profits mightily from seeing what data you store on line with it, knowing your location, monitoring your email, and looking at data in bulk. This becomes even funnier, in an Orwellian way, when you look at some of the companies involved in the coalition:

Aol (AOL), one of the largest users of line behavioral marketing to target ads
Microsoft (MSFT), another huge online marketer
Salesforce.com (CRM), an online customer relationship management tool that companies use to better turn information about you into better marketing
AT&T (T), which allegedly was hip deep in handing customer data over to the National Security Agency
Loopt, a "mobile social-mapping service"

Sure, there are some organizations involved, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU, that have always taken privacy seriously. But many of the groups associated with this effort make their living from the widest possible use of consumer data or represent the interests of private businesses. And they think that consumers should be worried about government intrusion? Quite the PR play, and with enough irony to float an aircraft carrier.

Image: Flickr user secretlondon123, CC 2.0.