Governmental Hypocrisy

The governments of France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom have jointly sent a letter to Google bemoaning the amount of data it collects and uses about its customers. Check out this excerpt below:

However, we are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world’s citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications. We were disturbed by your recent rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application, which betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws. Moreover, this was not the first time you have failed to take adequate account of privacy considerations when launching new services.

For the UK government this is an almost unbelievable level of hypocrisy. While we have strong data protection laws, the government has a voracious appetite for information about us. The intense tracking of electronic communications, retention of innocent people’s DNA and the never-ending farce of the ID card scheme with all its biometric data collection paraphernalia are just three examples of the government’s over collection of data.

You could write a letter to the government containing the following:

However, we are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of UK citizens are being forgotten as the Government rolls out new technological applications. We were disturbed by your recent moves towards intrusive ID cards, DNA retentions and communications tracking, which betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws. Moreover, this was not the first time you have failed to take adequate account of privacy considerations when launching new policies.