{"id":109,"date":"2008-02-06T22:40:30","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T06:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cubist.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/2008\/02\/06\/google-privacy-policy-2007-in-review\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T22:40:30","modified_gmt":"2008-02-07T06:40:30","slug":"google-privacy-policy-2007-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/2008\/02\/06\/google-privacy-policy-2007-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Privacy Policy: 2007 in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google has posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2IKBke1puFw\">a video<\/a> recap of 2007&#8217;s privacy policies. In the heart of &#8220;don&#8217;t be evil&#8221;,  Google Global Privacy Counsel member Peter Fleischer covers Google&#8217;s position on some of the toughest privacy topics of our time.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cookie Expiration and Log purging<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Google will be implementing a realistic expiration date on cookies it gives to users.  The previous expiration date was more than 30 years, and critics said this set a bad example and was an unnecessary amount of time to hold a cookie.  Although cookies do not contain sensitive data, per se, I think it is important to be explicit and thoughtful of how long websites intend cookies to remain useful.  The idea of Log purging fits this vein but has potentially greater impact.  Because it is feasible that logs can be traced to individuals, by purging logs Google is absolving itself from the responsibility of holding information on people that governments of the future may seek.  The fact the data is being destroyed means our privacy will be protected regardless of how legislation attempts to infringe in the future.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Google Earth\/Street View<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Recently Google has been documenting city streets with omni directional photographs and attaching this data to its Google Maps.  This has a lot of people up in arms, as they feel that there is potential for incrimination or spying based on images of license plates, faces, and people being captured and published online.  Google is entitled to do this by the laws regarding public space in America.  However, this tests our principles behind the laws when explored on such a massive scale.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Privacy through  obfuscation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Peter reflects upon the phenomenon of data availability infringing upon privacy.  There have long been public records available in different areas such as home purchases, partial medical records, and political voting trends.  Privacy was protected because it was difficult to get these records or view them in any timely way (ie, you would have to go to the library and get the records in paper and look something up).  Now that these records are being moved to databases and can be searched and cross references, there have been a number of privacy issues arising. In the future, we must find ways to better refine how to protect data and still keep records of necessary information available.<\/p>\n<p>The decisions that Google makes have a huge impact on how our privacy is protected online.  As internet users, we must go to great lengths if we want to avoid contact with Google, and to some degree it is impossible.  Because of this, it is important to be aware of policy decisions that Google is making and how it will affect how much is or is not known about our data on the Internet.  Be in the know and you can protect yourself as well as know what not to worry about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google has posted a video recap of 2007&#8217;s privacy policies. In the heart of &#8220;don&#8217;t be evil&#8221;, Google Global Privacy Counsel member Peter Fleischer covers Google&#8217;s position on some of the toughest privacy topics of our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}