if everybody is saying that, but it's not actually happening. is there a discrepancy between what they're saying and what they're actually doing and i never really thought about that before i came here. >> the u.s. senate you youth program, sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q & a. this week on the communicators a look al google's new privacy policy with mark rogenberg and mark ericson of the open internet coalition. >> on march 1st of this year google changed its privacy policy and that's our topic this week on the communicators. mark ericson is the executive director of the open internet coalition. can you explain what google did to change its privacy policy and why? >> google announced about six week ago it was preparing to change its privacy policy. the first time i think a company of that size has given that much time and engaged in that kind of

education campaign but they took diverse privacy policies that applied to some 70 different products that google provides and they consolidated them into one single privacy policy that was uniform across all those different products. >> and what's the benefit to google of doing this? >> so the benefit to google they would say is one, you only have to manage one privacy policy. they would also say they're able to provide mortar geted ses to users so for instance if you're using their g mail product and you're inviting people to a prty that they may know who some of your friends or based on your interaction on a google social network might suggest friends you want to invite and they're able to do that because they are working with you both on their social network as well as

their email product and for the user what they would say is that it provides the user with one single privacy policy, rather than having to navigate 70 different ones and it provides the use erred with a more consistent uniform experience across all of their different platforms and where they can get mortar get information, advertise. s at each platform so it will be a better experience for the user as well. >> and before we introduce our other guest what is the open internet coalition? >> the open internet coalition is a coalition of leading internet companies, most of the big internet platforms social media companies. >> including google. >> including google and small start ups and it's a coalition that i run out of my law firm. >> also joining us here is mark rotenberg from the electronic information privacy center. bhas your view on the new google privacy policy.

>> we opposed it. we think the right thing to think about is the change of service. before march 1st google had different terms for each of its products. if you were using email for example it collected your personal information to provide an email service, if you were using youtube it collected your information to provide the youtube service, what google want to do was combine all that user information from all its different products so it simply told users that as of march 1st, the terms of service were going to change, it would combine all the data, it didn't give people a choice. they could essentially stop using google which for most people i think means stop using the internet and we objected as did many others. >> well, what's the damage that would be done to a use erred of google? >> well, i think in the first instance there's a genuine concern here about the company's commitment to users, the company's commitment to the privacy of

users. those privacy policies reflected in the terms of service essentially is what internet users rely on when they select a google service, and if they cheese g mail for example over another service and google says we had one policy and are changing the use certificate in an awkward position because another thing the companies do is collect a lot of data to lock the user in, your address book for example which you build up in the context of a particular service makes it very unlikely or not easy to move to another service so we think it was unfair. we actually property a suit here in washington. we sued the federal trade commission which surprised people, people said why don't you sue gaog el, we said we are going to the federal trade commission because google is under a consent order in part because of an investigation we had urged the ftc to

pursue to respect user privacy. we thought the changes that google announced violated that order and we sued the ftc to try to get them to enforce it. >> our guest reporter this week is paul kirby senior editor of telecommunications report. what should they have done in your view? if they said here's what we want to do, you can opt out of this? >> i think the best way to have done it would have been opt in. google said we have a new approach we think is going to provide benefit, you'll get more advertising you'd be interested in, we understand we have a commitment to you now in terms of our current privacy policy, but we would like to give you the opportunity to choose our new ingraitd user platform and users would say that sound good, we will sign up and certainly we would not have objected if gaog el had done that pause

so much of the internet is about choice. i think the less alternative would have been if faog el said we want to do this, we understand some people might not we will let those folks opt out so before march 1st you can make a choice this is if you want to opt out this is how you do it the gaog el didn't even do that and i think the other point making here differing earlier with the earlier comment when facebook proposed a similar change in its turms of service in 2009 led to a public discussion, people said we actually don't like this idea, facebook said you know what? if you don't like it we are not going to do it so another option for gaog el actually would have not to go forward with the change. after no opt in, no opt out. >> we don't have goo g le put do you want to respond how you think they should have proceed. >>.

>> well you don't opt out of privacy policies. it's a policy and a policy is something a company states is how they are conducting their business when you go to the washington post web site you can look at their privacy policy and you had don't opt out of a policy i think that the response to marc and i respect where marc is coming from, but i think marc's point of view in this space and has been is the different point of view than how we've handled privacy with regard to the commercial internet since the inception of the commercial internet and i think marc objects to that and i understand that, but his criticism really isn't about google. it's about the privacy policies across the commercial internet because googles policy is consistent with the policies of the social networks with companies like microsoft and yahoo!. if you think about a facebook they have a lot of different products and services under one platform. google is essentially a plornl but those products

are across different pages so you don't go to one site to get those pages. what foogle said is we are going to essentially do what those social networks and portals do is have one policy that applies to our products. the tradeoff is this, and this is one i think mark brifls with. the vast majority of consumers, 90% are okay with this concept that these social networks an companies like google provide free services like web based email service like mapping services like search services and they do that for free because they're able to sell non-personally identifyable information about the things you do on the internet the producesing habits you have, whether you go to sports sites or shopping sites and they're able to tell advertise thaers this user an again it's not personally identifiable that this user on this computer happens to like sports sites so they're

able to sell you ads that are more relevant and they're able because of that ad revenue then to provide those free services. >> you're saying people understand in the age of internet comes free with ads and people understand that? >> people understand that and people want ads that are more relevant to them. if you're into sports sites you don't want to get ads necessarily about shopping sites so the ads are more relevant so it works for the companies to provide the free services and it works for the users because they're getting mortar get information. marc has a very european approach about privacy, which is that the information dad information you should have much more control over even if it's not personally identifyable. that's a european perspective that's been rejected in the united states we have a tort based information which is not the information itself it's how you use the information whether that can be used in a way that would be inappropriate would harm you. the expectations that users

have and what gaog el is doing are consistent with the expectations that have when you go to the internet so when google announced that they were changing their policy users could have decided to relate vote. they didn't. in the facebook situation there was a lot of conservator nation. what google has done is consistent with what these other sites do. the second condition is the federal trade commission has objected to marc's lawsuit. the federal trade commission governs the space, they are able to enforce the consent decree, they have with several of these large internet companies through their statutory authority so they do that but i also anticipate we should have some privacy legislation, that we actually should have a morrow bus framework so that these complicated privacy policies, and they're complicated, could be put under a system of

some sort of framework where you have a federal government feel of a praovt for practices that are consistent with user expectation. >> you started shaking your head when marc said 90% approve. >> i think markham is making the stuff up. let me try to answer some of the points he made. first of all, this is hardly my view with respect to the concerns about the change in google's privacy policy. you had 36 state attorneys general objecting. i don't think they're in europe by the way. i think they're in states in the u.s. you had congressional leaders in the democratic and republican party objecting. you had 60 consumer organizations from the united states and europe objecting. in fact i would challenge markham to come up with a move made by an internet firm e-so far this year than has been more controversial

than google's march 1st change in its privacy policy i can't come up with one. i think they've left themselves open to a lot of criticism but here's a most interesting number, and what is the the view of internet users? markham says that internet users have accepted this idea that they give up personal information for free use of the internet. and i'd like to ask him to put some fact behind that, some research, some report, some study that lends credence to that claim and the reason i say that is because i recently looked closely as the pew study on internet life, they conducted a very extensive survey on america's use of search engines, fascinating survey, mow comprehensive review in seven or eight years, they found first of all that 92% of american adults use a google product every day. vast majority of search is done on google.

they found that 68% of people using those products object to personalization, object to page rankings based on personal interest and 73% with not okay with the idea that personal data was being collected to generate search results. so, on this critical point, part from the fact what google did on march 1st was widely opposed by just about everyone who considered the issue, except i think a small group of washington lobbyists as to the view of internet users i think there's a clear majority against what google is doing and other companies that rely on personal data in this way. >> i think the problem is way mix apples and oranges. what google is not sharing personal information under any widely accepted standard that we have in the u.s. government with third parties. they share anonymous

information about browsing habits. >> do you make this stuff up? google admits they keep user identified search history for 18 months, the entire debate about anonymous search history, even they wouldn't say that it's not user identified so why do you say this? >> this is where you're mixing apple ls and oranges respectly. >> it's not true. >> that's absolutely wrong. google does not share personally ifkr identifyable information with third parties. do they collect personally identifyable information that they keep in yes. >> what about subpoenas and search warrants? you just said a moment ago they don't propose information to third parties. >> you are mixing apples an oranges. government access to personal information is governed by --. >> are they a third party. >> under our fourth amendment jurisprudence.

what you're confusing is law enforcement access to information that not only google has but shopping sites that collect your information, sites that collect your address and the government has access to that upon subpoenas or lawful process under our electronic surveillance laws. >> but you're saying commercial third parties. >> when they get subpoenaed by law enforcement, yes, then they are required to do so and if you object to that, and i agree there are concerns in that space, we should change the laws that govern when law enforcement can ago accepts and how they access personal identifyable information. that's not unique to google.

>> you say things that aren't true and if i don't have the opportunity to respond the viewers are going to think what you're saying is correct. what you're trying to argue is it's different when law enforcement gets access to the information that google keeps about its users from google disclosing that same information to third party commercial providers. yes, and you're saying that all companies are subject to these law enforcement requirements which is also true. however, and this is the keep point. google makes the decision to keep far more information p internet users than any other company does and because they have made that decision, because they retain more data about google users, they leave those same people more vulnerable to those law enforcement requests that they know inevitablely will come and other companies which care about this issue make the decision not to keep so much information. they can delete search information but google says we don't care about that issue and therefore we are

going to retain the dad and this is a very important point to understand because when google chose on march 1st to combine the user data they also made users more vulnerable to law enforcement requests. now the copyright information involving youtube means it's not just a youtube users information that will be disclosed. it means that a google users information will be disclosed which is not just the youtube record. it's across the 70 google services. >> that's absolutely wrong and i'm not sure you're saying what i'm saying isn't correct because there is no criminal copyright investigation against youtube. it's not. there are civil lawsuits which are governed by an entirely different statute and framework than when the government asks forward that information and under our laws today, the civil actors aren't able to get personally identifyable information for their investigations. in fact that's what the southern district of new york said when viacom sued

youtube so it's absolutely wrong to say that users aren't currently under a threat of access under youtube viewing habits in some sort of current investigation. that's flat wrong. there is a criminal standard as you know that applies to government access of information and in fact gaok el as well as many of the large internet companies are leading the charge to amend laws to insure that there is, that a subpoena is required for personally identifyable identifiable to make information that's private to them when they're storing documents in a cloud that it's the same framework when they're seeking to get that document the government from your home. that's the framework. google collects more information about users mostly because they're one of the bigger companies so they have more information coming n. if you compare the information they collect to a smaller search engine like

ask.com, ask doesn't get the volume of information coming in that google does so part of the reason they're getting so much information is because they have more users. when the government accesses that information, when they're the third party, google actually has fought the government more times than any internet company i know of to say that users have a reasonable expectation about privacy in this space. i think what most viewers are thinking about when they think about this space is actually non-governmental third party commercial entities and what information they get access to. in that space they don't get any personal information so that is the case. >> mr. rotenberg, this is a good lively discussion and let's take up this second point which is the third party disclosure to commercial actors and you as i understand your argument you want to give a lot of credit to google for not disclosing user information to third parties and the

obvious answer is that google is dominant across so many essential internet services, it doesn't matter whether it difficulties closes the information to third parties. what mat certificates the sharing within the largest internet firm in the world between an email service between a video platform between a mapping service between a photo sharing service, all of these are google services and what google does by combining that information is to consolidate its monopoly information. it would be adverse to google's interest to disclose information to third parties because going set not interested in creating competitors or creating choice for current google services. it's completely consistent with their mod toll keep the information infernal and this actually underscores the significance of the march 1st decision because what google did in terms of reducing the privacy protection for internet users it also consolidated its control over so many of

these key essential internet sectors and that's troubling to me. not only for privacy reasons, but also for reasons of competition and innovation because i think the internet does they've when new firms can come along with a better idea or can compete and can draw users. what google is doing now by combining these policies is actually making it more difficult for others to participate in the internet economy and the thought that somehow it's a benefit that they're not disclosing user data to third parties is actually a reflect of aim to have as much control across the internet as possible. >> so you've add jd that it's not in google's interest to share information with third parties. i thought that's what this debates was about. then you pivot and stayed it's troubling because it prep vents competition. that's a totally different issue and it's actually one that's being looked at and

should be looked at by competition council and various jurisdictions and google should be looked at and they do have defend themselves on whether they're acting lawfully or not. but the competition policy side of this is totally different than the policy. >> you said the new policy allows them to consolidate power. they currently had privacy guidelines for those individual services. they con stol dated it. how did that had a how them to consolidate. >> because key to understanding a privacy policy is that information provide -- individuals provide information for the service they're signing up and we know specifically with regard to google because what happened with regard to google buzz last year so when google was trying to enter the social network space an compete against facebook and they had a large space of g mail users and they wanted to introduce a social network service and they weren't sure how to pop late and

whether affirmative consent would draw enough users they basically decided to convert their g mail subscribers into social network buzz subscribe erls and the personal address information that was in the g mail account holder's record was made available publicly to try to launch the social network service and we went to the federal trade commission and said this is ter reply unfair, pause people who signed up for g mail signed up for email service. they're finding their personal information that they thought was an address book widely accessible on the internet. google agreed with us they probably wouldn't say that publicly but they pretty much conceded it was a mistake to introduce buzz as they did. the ftc launched and investigation agreed with us, based on what had happened with buzz and this is the keep point that they're restating. the information that people have provided for an email

service, they didn't expect to be used for social network service and so, when google came along at the end of january, this year and said, oh that information that you provided for g mail we are going to make it available across all our services, we understandably went to the federal trade commission and said they simply can't do. it violates the consent order. now the case we lost wasn't on the merits n. fact the judge agreed with us that the google change raised in her words serious concerns. she simply concluded that program courts didn't have the ability to force the federal trade commission to take an enforcement action. >> did that surprise you because consent decrees are approved by courts? >> well we thought this consent decree had not been approved by a court but it was a final order from an agency and we thought we had a pretty good legal argument. >> as any final word from an agency whether a consent decree or. >> exactly and the enforcement decree from the

ftc says that fines shall be imposed. we went to court said there's a consent order a final order that should be enforced, the agency is required to enforce its orders, but as i said we lost not on the merits, simply a question of judicial review but coming back to markhams point obviously we have different perspectives on this issue but i think it's very important in this whole debate between the privacy groups and the people lepting the industry not to lose sight of the interests of users because it really is their data we are talking about. we are talking about how personal information is being collected by firms, how it's being used. >> markham ericson. >> personal information though mark is not being shared with commercial third parties. that's not what this policy is about. google has entered into a consent agreement with the federal trade commission that is one of the most robust in the space.

never internet brands have done the shame thing. they're subject to 20 years of audits from the federal trade commission to review their policies. the reason i suspect your organization went to the courts to try to get action was because you were getting rebuffed from the federal trade commission that has the authority in this space, is able to enforce their consent decree if they think there's a violation of that agreement they'll take appropriate action. >> i think we were not rebuffed. >> then it was inappropriate to go to the courts and that's what the federal trade commission said. >> mark wrote enberg do you see other companies using the google model as their own mod nell the future? >> don't think there's any other company that dominates the internet the way google does many clearedly facebook is a competitor to google and i think we can understand a lot of what google is doing today in terms of their gaining control over ultimately what is a battle for advertising dollars. both companies rely heavily on advertising dollars.

that's their core business and they need to provide services that will draw users but no other company is in google's position which is why we maintain this focus. >> but as private companies if they're clearly state whag their policies are up front, shouldn't they be allowed to proceed? >> well, i think they can if it's fair to the user. i mean we have to understand for example how these policies operate and one of the business concerns that the federal trade commission has always been sensitive to is the notion of bait and switch and it operates in this field. a company can say to we have a great privacy policy, we respect your adapt, and the user says that sounds great i'm going to pick you guys, and they build up a big address book and they build up a social network and they build up preferencess and then a few months later a year later the company says well we have got a new business model now, we are going to try things

differently and we are going to change the privacy policy. we think heights going to be really good for you and you're going to like it but what we promised you before we are not going to do anymore and that's the basic problem for users. it is this sense that companies will try to draw them in with an attractive policy but once they've got them then the rules change. >> markham ericson final word and then we are out of time. >> well, i think that when a company spends six weeks educating its user base about a change of policy that they believe is helpful to users and will make their product better they shouldn't be punished for the fact that they tried to set the expectations by not baiting and switching anybody but actually saying to their user community and highlighting this is what we are with to -- about to do six weeks from now so that kind of bait and switch tactic you're right should be gone after, it has been gone after, you've led to

charge issues, rightly so. this is not one of those cases and i think respectively some of the criticism about collecting information and what laws should apply in that space are proposals that have been rejected by mainstream policy-makers since the beginning of the commercial internet. that is a conversation we should have but the criticism about google i would respectfully say is more a criticism about the commercial internet not about one company. >> and unfortunately our conversation time has been ended we have been joined by markham evening southern of the internet coalition, more rosenberg of the electronic privacy and paul kirby of telecommunications ls reports, thanks for being with us.