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The privacy converts in a throwing weapon in the web

[18/07/2007] Information protection has moved from being a crusade of the organizations of users to a dangerous throwing weapon against the big multinacional firms. The companies have discovered that a little bit of doubt in respect to the private life of the clients can cause a comercial disaster. A frightening threat to the business model, but also an opportunity to destroy uncomfortable rivals.

Google has been the latest internet giant to find the danger of its privacy politics. In May, letters ended between the signature and body that looks out for the protection of data in the EU (known as Article 29) for having in black some of the colors of the internet search engine.

The scandal grew when a month afterwards a non-governmental organization (Privacy International) published a ranking that placed Google as the business least respectful of the private life of 23 analyzed. “Even my father called me, after reading the local newspaper in his small city in Florida to ask me why I was conducting my work so poorly,” confessed Peter Fleischer, privacy advisor of the company, in his personal blog.

Used to a popularity that it had for itself, Google has spent weeks looking for a balm to close the dangerous wound. And although the group Article 29 has dedicated to extend its inquires to all search engines, the damage may already be impossible to repair.

But this case is far from being the exception. Other icons of the web, like Ebay and Amazon, also have suffered campaigns against their politics of data protection. And the specialists in the matter predict that the pressure will increase. “We are convinced that the businesses that are not careful with this subject will run the risk of losing credibility and will suffer a repression, due to it they will be thought of as not legitimate before citizens, and this will be intensified in the future, as the citizens become more aware of the problem,” noted Artemi Rallo, director of the Spanish Agency of Information Protection. Many telecomunication and internet companies saw until now the millions of data they collected as only a resource that they could exploit,” says a lawyer specialized in information protection and intellectual property. “The telecomunication companies, over all, were pressing to be able to resell them o take advantage of them in their marketing campaigns.”

In the most recent months, nevertheless, the dealings with national supervisors of protection have multipied and have replaced, for a large part, the old conflicts with the authorities of the Competitors. The relief is potentially explosive for the compaines. Before they were faced with fines of millions like that of Microsoft for abusing its dominant position in Europe (497 millions of euros in 2004). Now the threat is less tangible in economic terms, but more difficult to prevent and with more devistating effects. A moral condemnation, appartently inoffensive, can ruin the reputation of a company and cause a commercial disaster without precident. And if now the businesses are criticized for anti-competitive practices, the matter that has moved to the front is that of information protection. The strength of the charges is an added risk because the justice is not just to acting before a tribunal but in the mobile arenas of popular opinion. And the popular opinion arrives in a quick manner, suddenly and with few possibilities for appeal.

A ranking that no business wants to top

The ranking of Google as the company least respectful of the protection of data has caused a bitter sentiment amongst the internet using community. The provisional ranking done by Privacy International (PI), a ONG over which has rained down criticisms for its methodology, like counting on Microsoft amongst the members of its advisory board. The organization defends itself noting that also it has attacked the practices of Bill Gates’ business, that appears as “seriously lacking” in the ranking. PI proposes to settle the debate with an international agreement over the protection of data and has proposed to negociate it with the companies of the business sector starting the next day, the 23rd, in San Francisco.

Source: www.cincodias.com
Date: 13.07.2007

The privacy converts in a throwing weapon in the web

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