Google: watching out,
or just watching?

Today Google will attempt to take a moral tack on the internet piracy debate, demanding that new international laws be passed to protect personal information.

Early this year EU officials conducted a privacy probe, concerned about how long Google keeps users' personal information. A compromise was reached in mid-June, with Google agreeing to hold search data for only 18 months.

Google has also begun working with Privacy International to clear its name from the company's blacklist.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Peter Fleischer of Google's global privacy counsel divulged, "Privacy laws have not kept up with the reality of the internet and technology, where we have vast amounts of information and every time a credit card is used online, the data on it can move across six or seven countries in a matter of minutes."

Google is expected to posit that existing internet privacy rules are out-of-date, and propose that a privacy format, perpetuated by ministers at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) conference of '04, be used as a model for developing more appropriate policies.

Among other things, the APEC format states users be notified when their data is being collected. It also leaves enforcement at the discretion of respective countries.