ACLU, EFF Urge Stronger Privacy at Google Book Search

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 24, 2009 - 6:08am.

San Francisco - A number of digital civil liberties advocates, including the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), this week sent a letter to Google's (NASD: GOOG) chief executive, urging the company to implement stringent privacy standards for its Google Book Search service. The organizations, which also included the Samuelson Clinic at the University of California, note that currently, Google tracks every book a user searches for and browses, as well as which titles are read and even what a user writes in the digital margins.

"Given the long and troubling history of government and third-party efforts to compel libraries and booksellers to turn over records about readers, it is essential that Google Books incorporate strong privacy protections in both the architecture and policies of Google Book Search," the letter reads.

Google and publishers are still awaiting court approval of a $125 million proposed settlement, of the lawsuit publishers filed over rights to digitally publish out-of-print books that are still in copyright.

"Our settlement agreement hasn't yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement haven't been built or even designed yet. That means it's very difficult (if not impossible) to draft a detailed privacy policy," Dan Clancy, Google's engineering director for Google Books, wrote in a blog post.

"Whatever we ultimately build will protect readers' privacy rights, upholding the standards set long ago by booksellers and by the libraries whose collections are being opened to the public through this settlement."

http://www.eff.org/files/gbs_privacy_schmidt_letter.pdf (PDF)

http://snipurl.com/nvin7 (Google blog post)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10294519-93.html