Facebook’s short-lived (but soon-to-be-re-enabled) experiment with sharing users’ addresses and phone numbers with third parties did not impress certain politicians.  Indeed, Representatives Barton and Markey, Co-Chairmen of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, were bothered enough to write to Mark Zuckerberg.

In fairness to Facebook, the company only intended to share users’ data with their permission.  It was quick to back down in response to criticism, too.  So a thought about political grandstanding might not be out of line.

Any hope that Mark Zuckerberg had of the latest Facebook privacy flap blowing over must be fading fast.  Late yesterday, two members of the House of Representatives wrote an open letter to him complaining about the problem and asking for further details.

Google has informed a senior Republican representative that it would endorse and support a U.S. privacy law.

The amount of user’s personal information collected by Google, Yahoo and other online companies has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and Google has been urged to post a link on its homepage that takes users to its privacy policy.

In May, Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asked Google for information about the company’s privacy policies since it purchased DoubleClick.

The top Republican on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Joe Barton, again asked Google about its privacy practices.

House Republican Joe Barton from Texas has a burr in his saddle about Google – 24 burrs, to be precise, some in multiple parts.

House Republicans have demanded a Congressional hearing over the privacy implications of Google’s pending DoubleClick purchase.