I enjoyed Fleischer’s mini-rant, so here, courtesy of the Times, is the bulk of it:

Quite the little outburst, isn’t it?  Yet I’m strongly anti-tie, as well, and within the search community, Fleischer also won Danny Sullivan’s support.  Nicholas Carr, on the other hand, is concerned about the letter’s attitude towards tubby people, and ignores issues of menswear (though you’ll note Carr is tie-less in his Rough Type photo).

Thus far, Google’s gotten involved with philanthropy and politics.  Personal fitness may be a touchy subject, yet as far as I’m concerned, Fleischer is more than welcome to reign over fashion.

Privacy International placed Google at the bottom of the list among its major competitors, saying Google was "hostile" toward privacy. Danny Sullivan and Google’s Matt Cutts were both quick to come to Google’s defense. Sullivan called PI’s study "haphazard."

On Monday, Fleischer didn’t mention PI at all, but wrote at the Google Blog about the working relationship the company has with Article 29, beginning with a reiteration of Google’s privacy track record.

(It’s easy to imagine Fleischer with his tongue stuck out as he writes about resisting government subpoenas, user controls and choices, and by noting the Working Party’s praise of the company for its "readiness to consult" – contrasted, of course, with the competition.)

Fleischer announced Google’s new policy of anonymizing server logs after 18 months, shortening the previous policy of 18-24 months. Various government pressures, he notes, may require the company to return to the 24-month version.

It’s interesting that he chose to publish the company’s response to the Working Party rather than PI, especially given the timing. His post was in response to the Working Party’s letter asking the company to justify its data retention policies, feeling that the 24-month standard was too long.

Fleischer enumerates the justification this way:

·    _{to improve our search algorithms for the benefit of users
·    to defend our systems from malicious access and exploitation attempts
·    to maintain the integrity of our systems by fighting click fraud and web spam
·    to protect our users from threats like spam and phishing
·    to respond to valid legal orders from law enforcement as they investigate and prosecute serious crimes like child exploitation; and
·    to comply with data retention legal obligations.}

That last one, regarding legal obligations, brings to light the struggles Google faces on an international level. In Fleischer’s six-page letter, he notes the Enron-inspired Sarbanes-Oxley law, and both German and US pressure to retain data for 24 months, indicating Google’s desire but potential inability to comply with its own newly-instituted retention policy.

From the letter:

Thus, the discussion regarding the right retention period is in fact a global discussion. Google is a U.S. company and we respect U.S. laws — but we are also a global company, doing business across Europe and across the world, and we recognize the need to respect the laws of the countries in which we do business. We are therefore committed to data protection principles that meet the expectations of our users in Europe and across the globe….

There is no single right answer to the question of how long server logs should be retained.

 Note again, who is not mentioned. Yahoo has had its run-ins with China already. It’s entirely possible Google will be called on to turn over data to the Communist government to track down dissenters.

Regardless of international nuances and pressures, the anonymizing promise is an nice addition to Fleischer’s thumb-biting toward PI. The company says the anonymization of logs will not be reversible, meaning that no one, not even Google he says, will be able to read identifying information once logs data has been anonymized.

Odd Privacy Comments From Google’s Fleischer

Peter Fleischer became the latest to speak out about Sweden’s proposed law. If it takes effect, the government will be able legally to monitor email and telephone traffic going in and out of Sweden.

A Swedish English-language publication, The Local, cited Fleischer’s remarks from a Tuesday visit to the country:

"We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden’s borders if the proposal goes through," Fleischer told Internet World. "We simply cannot compromise our users’ integrity by allowing Swedish authorities access to data that may not even concern Swedish activity," said Fleischer. "The proposal stems from a tradition begun by Saudi Arabia and China and simply has no place in a western democracy," he said.

That last comment caught our attention. We’re sure Fleischer is a busy guy, but he had to see the memo about Google willingly entering China and acceding to government censorship.

Then there is the matter of similar spying taking place much closer to Google’s Mountain View home. As many in the tech industry and elsewhere have noted, AT&T has been accused by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a former AT&T employee of doing what Sweden proposes.

Maybe we just missed the news that Fleischer or someone at Google has filed an amicus brief in the EFF case. If they haven’t, Fleischer might want to look into what this western democracy in America has been accused of doing to US citizens on a massive scale.