UK Court Allows Activists to Sue Google Over Safari Tracking

DaveN · Jan 16, 2014

samcraig said:
I admit I have little knowledge on the UK court system.

However - my only question is - what damage occurred and is that an important metric to prove in order to win a case.

This trial is in the UK so different rules are likely to apply. For example, in the USA you would have to prove a loss but from the article, we have this "The Claimants' application to rely on ground (9) in relation to the DPA [Data Protection Act] claim is allowed." so the plaintiffs' case appears to be built on Google violating the Digital Protection Act which appears to be a United Kingdom law. This would be why Google wants it to be tried in the USA so they need to prove a loss and the DPA would not be applicable.

That said, one could argue that their is a loss. While the information taken by Google may have no monetary value to the plaintiff, it does have monetary value as it is used by Google to increase their ad sales. Without the data, the click through rate is lower. Hence, the value would be the difference in the ad revenue for a group that had the information collected versus the ad revenue for a group that did not have the information collected. The information is worth a lot of money as you can see from Google's advertising sales. Without advertising sales, Google is nothing.

SlCKB0Y · Jan 16, 2014

Mac.Pro said:
Do you know that every citizen is targeted? There's no proof. I seriously doubt it, considering that at least one person would be needed to track and analyze all the data that one person sends.

Huh? The fact that they capture everything means that everyone is targeted. Every ones privacy is invaded. They don't need one person - they have thousands of machines analysing data.

It's the intelligence equivalent of fishing with massive drift nets.

Perhaps some data from everyone is collected but not looked at unless needed. And anyway, why would you care about that? Ironic that you mention paranoia…

Under what circumstances would it be "needed"?

I don't care if a person hasn't looked at the data - it's still a massive invasion of privacy. Would you want a camera in your bathroom? I promise I won't watch the video feed.

Think about it like this - even at the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union would not have even been close to engaging in this level of spying on their own citizens, i'm sure they would have liked to but they simply did not have the technology at the time. What the NSA is currently doing would have been the KGB's idea of a wet dream.

we're talking terrorist plots vs. your sense of perfect and complete privacy.

Haha, really? Serious terrorists haven't used mobile phones or unencrypted net communication for at least the last decade. They may be nutjobs but they are not stupid.

gnasher729 · Jan 17, 2014

Taz Mangus said:
Paying a fine of $22.5 million means nothing to a company like Google, like paying $10 to the average person. There is nothing about the amount that would deter them from doing something like that again.

As a rule, a similar offense repeated would result in a much bigger fine for that reason.

And maybe $22.5 million means nothing to Google. However, you'll have to ask yourself how much benefit Google got from this, and I don't think it was $22.5 million. Someone wrote the code and is responsible for $22.5 million unnecessary cost. He has a manager who asked him to write the code or didn't prevent it, and is responsible for $22.5 million unneccessary cost. They are not going to be told, "that's ok, do it again if you have an opportunity" but will get some major telling off.

Cubytus · Jan 17, 2014

SlCKB0Y said:
Huh? The fact that they capture everything means that everyone is targeted. Every ones privacy is invaded. They don't need one person - they have thousands of machines analysing data.

It's the intelligence equivalent of fishing with massive drift nets.

Under what circumstances would it be "needed"?

I don't care if a person hasn't looked at the data - it's still a massive invasion of privacy. Would you want a camera in your bathroom? I promise I won't watch the video feed.

Think about it like this - even at the height of the cold war, the Soviet Union would not have even been close to engaging in this level of spying on their own citizens, i'm sure they would have liked to but they simply did not have the technology at the time. What the NSA is currently doing would have been the KGB's idea of a wet dream.

Haha, really? Serious terrorists haven't used mobile phones or unencrypted net communication for at least the last decade. They may be nutjobs but they are not stupid.

Thanks. They even recently admitted that no terrorist plot was ever tackled by such surveillance and not by normal investigation techniques.

Plus, it has grown so big that they have trouble managing who does what in the intelligence community as it drains billions of dollars of state budget.

Otherwise, I often hear "I don't care, I have nothing to hide", to which I invariably reply "Really? So it's 22 degrees here, strip naked, now!".

DaveN · Jan 17, 2014

gnasher729 said:
As a rule, a similar offense repeated would result in a much bigger fine for that reason.

And maybe $22.5 million means nothing to Google. However, you'll have to ask yourself how much benefit Google got from this, and I don't think it was $22.5 million. Someone wrote the code and is responsible for $22.5 million unnecessary cost. He has a manager who asked him to write the code or didn't prevent it, and is responsible for $22.5 million unneccessary cost. They are not going to be told, "that's ok, do it again if you have an opportunity" but will get some major telling off.

Way to try to minimize what Google did. It was all just a simple low-level mistake. They didn't really mean to do it. Horse hockey. Just like they didn't mean to gather data on people's wifi networks as they drove around the country for street view. It was all just a simple coding error. Google didn't mean to do it. Google is doing everything it can to gather every shred of information they can on everyone they can. It is their business model.

Cubytus · Jan 17, 2014

DaveN said:
Way to try to minimize what Google did. It was all just a simple low-level mistake. They didn't really mean to do it. Horse hockey. Just like they didn't mean to gather data on people's wifi networks as they drove around the country for street view. It was all just a simple coding error. Google didn't mean to do it. Google is doing everything it can to gather every shred of information they can on everyone they can. It is their business model.

And I strongly suspect they do sell your data to spammers, as I began receiving spams about security cameras shortly after I began to make such research using Google's search engine.

gnasher729 · Jan 17, 2014

DaveN said:
Way to try to minimize what Google did. It was all just a simple low-level mistake. They didn't really mean to do it. Horse hockey. Just like they didn't mean to gather data on people's wifi networks as they drove around the country for street view. It was all just a simple coding error. Google didn't mean to do it. Google is doing everything it can to gather every shred of information they can on everyone they can. It is their business model.

You are completely misunderstanding what I said. They may have a severe cultural/attitude problem at Google, dictated from the top, and something like this cannot be explained otherwise. But there is one programmer, one manager, one department head, who cost the company 22 million dollars, and that's not something that is easily forgiven.

marty.p · Jan 17, 2014

samcraig said:
I admit I have little knowledge on the UK court system.

However - my only question is - what damage occurred and is that an important metric to prove in order to win a case.

The Data Protection Act has a provision for "positive consent", meaning that a customer or user is required to opt-in to data collection, as opposed to being provided with a facility to to opt-out. Collecting data without expressed consent is not allowed, so circumventing a provision which allows people to specifically opt-out is even worse. In addition to this, it is a requirement that collected data is not used for direct marketing purposes, and that it is not transmitted outside of the European Economic Area for processing in a territory that doesn't have similar legal provisions. I can see that Google could potentially be in breach of the act on all three of these counts.

In the UK, there is no requirement to prove damages because the law has potentially been breached.

davester · Jan 17, 2014

They've obviously long-forgotten their company motto...

gnasher729 · Jan 18, 2014

DaveN said:
This trial is in the UK so different rules are likely to apply. For example, in the USA you would have to prove a loss but from the article, we have this "The Claimants' application to rely on ground (9) in relation to the DPA [Data Protection Act] claim is allowed." so the plaintiffs' case appears to be built on Google violating the Digital Protection Act which appears to be a United Kingdom law. This would be why Google wants it to be tried in the USA so they need to prove a loss and the DPA would not be applicable.

I thought it is a general principle that an illegal act goes to court in the country where it has an effect. Google made the computers of people in the UK accept tracking cookies against the explicit wishes of those people in the UK, in breach of UK law, so of course this would go to court in the UK. Now if Google was a company that never touched any of the EU financially, then there might be a problem collecting any fines. But since they operate in the EU, the court would be able to collect a fine from any place in the EU.

Of course, if Google doesn't want to appear in court in the UK, nobody can force them to appear. They would of course lose the case, but nobody can force them to appear in court.

Cubytus · Jan 18, 2014

marty.p said:
The Data Protection Act has a provision for "positive consent", meaning that a customer or user is required to opt-in to data collection, as opposed to being provided with a facility to to opt-out. Collecting data without expressed consent is not allowed, so circumventing a provision which allows people to specifically opt-out is even worse. In addition to this, it is a requirement that collected data is not used for direct marketing purposes, and that it is not transmitted outside of the European Economic Area for processing in a territory that doesn't have similar legal provisions. I can see that Google could potentially be in breach of the act on all three of these counts.

In the UK, there is no requirement to prove damages because the law has potentially been breached.

Now, the law probably didn't think providers would simply require that a user opts-in to receive otherwise unrelated service. Facebook didn't invent it.

the8thark · Jan 18, 2014

Lionel Messi said:
Google's going down!

One can only hope.

UKgaryb · Jan 19, 2014

DaveN said:
This trial is in the UK so different rules are likely to apply. For example, in the USA you would have to prove a loss but from the article, we have this "The Claimants' application to rely on ground (9) in relation to the DPA [Data Protection Act] claim is allowed." so the plaintiffs' case appears to be built on Google violating the Digital Protection Act which appears to be a United Kingdom law. This would be why Google wants it to be tried in the USA so they need to prove a loss and the DPA would not be applicable.

That said, one could argue that their is a loss. While the information taken by Google may have no monetary value to the plaintiff, it does have monetary value as it is used by Google to increase their ad sales. Without the data, the click through rate is lower. Hence, the value would be the difference in the ad revenue for a group that had the information collected versus the ad revenue for a group that did not have the information collected. The information is worth a lot of money as you can see from Google's advertising sales. Without advertising sales, Google is nothing.

DPA = Data Protection Act, it's a European Law that sets controls about how and where customer data is stored/transferred. These companies (e.g. Google) dance around it, it's about time we set a precedent for foreign companies using us as the product.

rdlink · Jan 20, 2014

gnasher729 said:
You are completely misunderstanding what I said. They may have a severe cultural/attitude problem at Google, dictated from the top, and something like this cannot be explained otherwise. But there is one programmer, one manager, one department head, who cost the company 22 million dollars, and that's not something that is easily forgiven.

I think the point that you're either minimizing or forgetting is the fact that Google made that $22 million (plus the $17 million paid to the states) in less than a day of their surreptitious spying. Fact is, this is a cultural issue within Google, and it is their business model. But wrist slaps like this are nothing to them.

This is a company that just paid $3.2 billion for Nest. I like my Nest product, but there is no way the technology that they created is worth $3.2 billion. Google bought the ability to snoop into peoples' lives.

The only way you stop a giant with no moral values is to hurt them really, really bad in the pocket book. That $22 million fine would have only started to be felt if the amount was billion instead of million...

Cubytus · Jan 22, 2014

This will not happen until we aggressively use Ghostery, AdBlocke, and overall stop using Google's products (Yes, that includes GMail) for equal-quality ones, or paid-for (even at a modest cost) ones.

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UK Court Allows Activists to Sue Google Over Safari Tracking

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