Google: Privacy doesn't exist. Completely. All the time. (Especially for you)

According to IT World, Google has been accused of hypocrisy after the search engine defended its Street View tool by saying "complete privacy doesn't exist." Read the full article here.

The mike goes to Ken Boehm, chairman of the U.S. National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), "Perhaps in Google's world privacy does not exist, but in the real world individual privacy is fundamentally important and is being chipped away bit by bit every day by companies like Google." And even if that happens with "consumer consent", then I think that the discussion on where to draw the line should steer clear of any demagogy.

In my personal opinion, it's not smart to talk about "complete privacy" as the standard, when the debate is really around a specific, situational privacy issue. To be fair, Google issued the following statement regarding its comments: "The response quotes and expands upon an existing legal opinion to help frame the response. It should not be interpreted as a blanket statement on our views towards privacy." I hope that as a result, companies like Google, that hold large amounts of personal data, realize that consumers take the corporate responsibility of those firms seriously, which includes the kind of arguments that they use in such a debate.