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American law has never taken an absolutist view of privacy rights. For example, even lawyer confidentiality has exceptions, as for example when a client tells y
by grellas 16y ago
American law has never taken an absolutist view of privacy rights. For example, even lawyer confidentiality has exceptions, as for example when a client tells you he is going to commit a future crime (that is not regarded as privileged and can be disclosed by the attorney to the authorities).
In the context of lawsuits and court orders, the key to protecting privacy is to abide by due process concerns. In other words, sometimes otherwise private information can become subject to discovery through legal processes such as third-party subpoenas. A holder of that information, such as Google, has no direct stake in the fight between the parties and will not disclose such information voluntarily. Nonetheless, court processes permit litigants to use lawful means to compel disclosure. Notice typically must be given to the adverse party, who in turn has a right to contest the litigant's right to obtain the information. A neutral judge will then consider whether the information ought to be protected when weighing the importance of disclosure in such a case against any rights of privacy that might be implicated (it is this process of notice, opportunity to contest, and neutral judicial evaluation that affords the due process protections). In most such cases, privacy rights do ultimately trump disclosure but not in all. Thus, when a court orders that disclosure be made, a litigant is forced to make it and, if a third party such as Google holds that information, it too is ordered to make it, though it has no stake in the fight.
Since American law is not absolutist on the privacy issues, and since Google must comply with lawful court orders, I don't think it can be faulted for doing so. Also, given the likely huge number of times it finds itself in this position, I don't think there is anything untoward about a number such as "9,000 times a year." This is perhaps why Mr. Schmidt made his comment in such an off-handed way. This is just a routine part of doing business.
I will grant there are policy arguments that could be made to the contrary but, legally, Google is on sound footing in its handling of privacy issues as described in the article.
- hugh3 16y agoAmerican law has never taken an absolutist view of privacy rights. Does any form of law take an absolutist view of privacy rights?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Semiapies 16y agoNo government's law takes an absolutist view of any right not belonging to the government. The rhetorical purpose of pointing out that American law doesn't take an absolutist view of the right in question is to imply that someone disagreeing with the speaker is some sort of "absolutist" lunatic who's out of step with the law the speaker supports, which is of course sensible.
- gwtw 16y agoQuote: Art. 13 Right to Privacy 1 All persons have the right to receive respect for their private and family life, home, and secrecy of the mails and telecommunications. 2 All persons have the right to be protected against the abuse of personal data.
- smalter 16y agorespectfully, your post is misleading. it's not there there isn't an "absolutist view of privacy rights", it's that there is a very narrow "right to privacy." i put "right to privacy" in quotes because whether it exists at all is debatable (i take no view on the issue). i'm talking about privacy from a constitutional standpoint. "private" documents/information are tangentially protected by various rules of procedure and statutes. for instance, a request for documents should have probative value outweighing the request's burden. however, i don't believe that there are privacy rights per se in very much or any of this. the disclosure of a litigant's private information within the context and scope of litigation is the rule, not the exception. some people's favorite pastime is embarrassing their enemies through litigation. i have some sense of what that's like, having read thousands of litigants' personal emails.
- irons 16y agoi put "right to privacy" in quotes because whether it exists at all is debatable (i take no view on the issue). Whether its existence is debatable is also, apparently, debatable.
- jacquesm 16y agoWhenever someone uses the word 'respectfully' it is invariably followed by something that indicates a lack of respect. Respectfully, you could have probably gotten the point across without resorting to that sort of writing. Disagreeing with someone does not automagically mean that they are misleading.
- notaddicted 16y agoI don't fault Google for following the law, rather for creating information about their users that can then be used against them. I saw this quote on Hacker News a while back: "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product." The customer of Google is the advertiser -- not the user. As part of Google's buisness of selling advertisements they are creating information about their users and turning it over to law enforcement ... presumably to be used against the users.
- ErrantX 16y agoThey are in a bind over such things though; because storing historical search data helps them offer an improved service to search users. So what do they do? Delete logs instantly and provide no you search history etc. or..? It is a balance.
- omouse 16y agoCan't they simply encrypt much of the data or obfuscate in such a way that it never points directly to a user?
- bch 16y agoAnonymize the data? that's what we did when I worked in telecomm and we needed "good data" to run tests.
- BCM43 16y agoDuck Duck Go improves searches this way while also not keeping logs.
- hugh3 16y agoUltimately, do you think more harm or good has been done by revealing these search histories under court order? Good: some criminals have presumably been convicted, some innocent people have probably been exonerated. Some crimes have probably been prevented. Harm: jaded FBI agents have got an occasional giggle from looking through the search history of folks under suspicion.
- qjz 16y agoConfidentiality protections are not really intended to protect individual privacy rights. Several professions (legal, medical, etc.) rely on confidentiality in order to effectively provide critical services that benefit the greater good.
- exit 16y agowhich jurisdictions is google subject to such court orders under? is it just a matter of where the datacenters are located?