EFF Demands Better Search Privacy In Europe

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging the Council of Europe to step up the privacy safeguards for users’ data collected by search engines.

The Council is preparing to issue guidelines for search engines and is currently in the process of collecting comments on the proposed rules.

Privacy protections

In its comments to the Council (PDF), the EFF urged the Council to better protect user privacy with regard to government requests for information, as well as promoting transparency on requests for search records and preserving rights to freedom of expression, including readers’ rights to read information online.

“At a time when individuals regularly turn to search engines to find information on the Internet, search privacy is of paramount importance,” the EFF said in its letter to the Council. “Search engines have the ability to record individuals’ search queries and maintain massive databases that can include the most intimate details of a person’s life. Government or individual litigants can get access to a person’s search records and connect that information to a specific identity.”

The EFF urged that the Council recommend that member states adopt strong legal safeguards and due process before disclosure of individuals’ search records to government bodies, EFF international rights director Katitza Rodriguez said in a blog post last week.

Other recommendations included that a user should be notified when their search records are sought, that users should be offered the option of searching anonymously, that search engines should not be required to conduct any filtering or blocking, and that search engines should be allowed to clearly disclose when any filtering has been carried out.

The EFF also praised the draft recommendations for acknowledging that search engines play a central role as intermediaries on the Internet by enabling the public to seek, impart and receive information and ideas worldwide.

Google probe

The European Commission is currently investigating Google on antitrust grounds, an implicit acknowledgement of the central importance of search engines to the Internet.

The investigation follows complaints by rivals including Microsoft Ciao and UK price comparison site Foundem, which allege that Google’s search algorithms demote their sites in Google search results because they are Google competitors.

The investigation was expanded in December 2010, following further complaints from a conglomerate of 450 newspaper and magazine publishers, known as the B.D.Z.V. and V.D.Z., and Euro-Cities, an online mapping specialist.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said in February that the company may be open to tweaking its search algorithm to head off the antitrust investigation, where it could end up paying billions of dollars in fines.

Last week Microsoft added its voice to the probe with a formal antitrust complaint to the EC.

In a company blog post, Microsoft’s senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith claimed that Google has “engaged in a broadening pattern of walling off access to content and data that competitors need to provide search results to consumers and to attract advertisers”.