Worlds upside down: Google and Facebook taking France to court in privacy issue

Ask anybody on the web which companies scare them the most when it comes to privacy matters. In nine out of ten cases there are two names mentioned: Google and Facebook. After all, they are the companies that gather and hold the most information from its users.

Both companies also get taken to court once every few months by a country or some sort of commission. That can be for antitrust issues, but also for privacy matters, think Streetview in for example Germany. Google and Facebook however have now turned things around: they are suing France over privacy matters.

Google and Facebook believe that the decree by the State Council to connection data stored for a year. In the decree is stated that e-commerce sites, video-music sites and online email services have to keep data like full names, associated postal address, pseudonyms, associated email addresses, telephone number, passwords and data used to check or modify them stored for a year and ready to be demanded by the authorities in case of for example terroristic threats.

Facebook and Google are amongst 20 Internet companies active in France that claim this goes against European regulations. Their representative from the French Association of Internet Community Services (ASIC) Benoit Tabaka said:

“Several elements are problematic. For instance, there was no consultation with the European Commission. This is a shocking measure, this obligation to keep passwords and hand them over to police services.”

Privacy expert Jitty van Dodewaard from the Dutch DMA says Facebook and Google have a case:

“In principle they have a case because the law says you can store data for a cause which you have to make clear to your visitors or users.

On the one hand they feel they get controlled by the government to be careful with their privacy data, but that same government forces them using a “back door” to store that same data for fighting terrorism purposes.”

Still it is funny to see how the two companies which get the most questions about privacy in the meantime sue those who control them. And I agree that they have a valid point. It’s about time some decent regulations are being made…

Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld is a speaker, trainer and online marketing strategist. Bas is the owner of Stateofsearch.com. -- You can hire Bas to speak, train or consult. -- More articles and bio from Bas van den Beld