Google's Paltry Privacy Proposal

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It also excludes many other kinds of privacy violation, such as simple embarrassment. The process of proving financial harm from a privacy violation is expensive, lengthy, and can rack up huge legal bills.

Privacy laws should serve the same purpose as environmental protection regulations; they should act as a deterrent to stop an undesirable outcome. Punishing the guilty after years of expensive legal hassle is hardly the point or purpose—it doesn't stop businesses from hurting customers in the first place. It's like making it legal for someone to shoot a gun into a crowd, and charging them only if they hit someone.

This kind of privacy framework will not serve the desired purpose of protecting consumers against privacy violations. It serves primarily to protect the company's bottom line by reducing the costs of future litigation and international legal defense fees.

A widespread rush to adopt an APEC-like standard could have a devastating aftereffect—international acceptance of such a diluted policy would make it difficult to pass tougher laws at local or national levels.

Google Should Set the Highest Standard

No business sector would allow this kind of regulation to be applied to them, making it difficult to assert their rights. Would the Recording Industry Association of America accept the restriction of only being able to sue a pirate if he'd been caught red-handed selling stolen music, instead of their current practice of shotgunning legal action against anyone leaving a mere digital trail of a download? When it comes to the music industry's penchant for protecting trademarks and copyrights, the mere hint of an abstraction seems to be plenty.

We consumers deserve better than this. Companies like Google should go the extra mile and voluntarily protect our information better than the toughest international law, not try to keep pace with the weakest. The more Google seeks to become the center of our online informational interactions, the more it should raise the bar on its own ethical behavior. Although its attempt at formulating some kind of global privacy standard is appreciated, it is not too late—but it is far too little.

Holtzman, who blogs at Globalpov.com, is the author of Privacy Lost and founder and chief technology officer of pseuds Inc. He writes frequently on technology and privacy at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.