Google's Silence on Privacy Policy Irks EU Regulators

European officials today criticized Google for not responding to their privacy-related inquiries in a timely fashion.

As a result, France's CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libert?s) - which is representing the European Commission's Article 29 Working Party - said today that it would set up a working group that would examine the search giant's policies.

That group should be in place by summer. CNIL said it will submit its proposal at the next Article 29 Working Party plenary session on Feb. 26.

In a statement, a Google spokeswoman said "our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the CNIL throughout this process, and we'll continue to do so going forward."

The CNIL's battle with Google goes back almost a year. At issue is an update to Google's privacy policy that went into effect on March 1, 2012. The revamp consolidated 70 or so privacy policies across Google's products down to one. But with this change, Google also switched to one profile for users across all services rather than separate logs for offerings like YouTube, Search, and Blogger.

It's that account consolidation bit that had privacy advocates up in arms. In early Feb. 2012, the Article 29 Working Party asked Google to "pause" its privacy policy update, but Google declined.

CNIL responded by asking Google for more details about its plan, and Google submitted its answers in April. CNIL said that response was incomplete and issued several recommendations in October that covered how Google might improve its privacy policies. Google has not yet responded to those recommendations, prompting today's statement.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 2 p.m. Eastern with comment from Google.

For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415552,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05079TX1K0000993

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