DoubleClick neatly covers that vulnerability like a set of thick leather boots. That has the groups concerned. They want the Federal Trade Commission to block or modify the multi-billion dollar proposal Google has on the table to acquire the company.

The three groups submitted a second supplement to the FTC, claiming that without safeguards for consumer information in place, that data could be abused by government or commercial entities.

Google’s current stance on privacy calls for a global standard based on the APEC framework. Melissa Ngo of EPIC blasted that proposal as “feeble” during a conference call.

Amina Fazlullah of US PIRG thinks information collection centralized in this merger, with Google in its dominant position, will affect the consumer’s position in the marketplace. Pricing and item availability could be impacted by what Google would know with its aggregated information.

“Content producers would be stuck with very few choices,” Fazlullah said of advertising opportunities for that blanket group of industries, should the deal go through.

CDD executive director Jeff Chester said the “overwhelming share of control” possible from the deal poses a “profound threat to privacy at home and abroad.”

That seems to be the case for Canada, today, as the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic filed a request for an audit of the merger with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Google has posted an early response to the FTC’s concerns at its Public Policy blog.

Pablo Chavez, Google Policy Counsel, said in the post his company is “glad to see” the FTC readying its town hall meeting about online advertising on November 1 and 2.

“Late last week we sent comments recommending that the Town Hall address two additional topics,” said Chavez. “We did so in response to the FTC’s request for suggested Town Hall topics in addition to the very timely questions it already plans to pursue.”

Google has asked the FTC to consider “the rapidly changing business landscape of online advertising, and the role it plays in providing free, accessible, user-friendly, and high-quality content to consumers,” and “the ways in which online advertising is contributing to a healthy and vibrant small business community.”

Google will have access to a lot more information through DoubleClick than it had already.

The CDD’s Jeff Chester, whose first-in-a-series of multitudinous words, begins the complaint to the FCC this way:

In the rapidly expanding world of online advertising, a few mega-giants are dramatically expanding their power, including the ability to track consumers’ online movements, to collect and analyze personal data resulting from those travels, and to craft ever-more-sophisticated digital marketing campaigns based on that analysis. 

The recent spate of mergers and acquisitions in the online advertising industry—led by Google’s $3.1 billion takeover of DoubleClick in April and Microsoft’s $6 billion buyout of aQuantive in May—threatens to undermine privacy, competition, and diversity on the Internet.  Permitting the further growth of these data-dependent unrestrained giants is a threat to personal privacy online. 

Increasing digital media consolidation will also have a negative impact on the diversity of public interest content essential for a civil society (e.g., news, public affairs, and cultural programming).

Yes, that’s only three sentences. And yes, somewhat melodramatic, but it will be up to the Federal Trade Commission to decide it’s merit. The triad of privacy advocates added to their original complaint to the FTC, with EPIC leading the wordy objections.

The 12 Commandments, as taken from the 21-page amendment pdf:

1. Order Google to provide meaningful notification when personal data from two distinct Google services are combined to produce a result that is linked an identifiable user.

2. Order Google to give a user the right to obtain knowledge, in a reasonable and timely manner, of whether or not the data relating to the user is processed and if it is processed, information to the purpose of the processing.

3. Order Google to provide, in a reasonable and timely manner, the logic involved in any automatic processing of data concerning that user.

4. Order Google not to retain user data in a form that permits the identification of data subjects for longer than necessary for the purposes for which the data were collected.

5. Order Google to institute an “opt-in” approach to collecting user information. If Google allows a user to “opt-in” before collecting personal data in order to personalize the search experience, Google should implement the same system with regards to a user’s privacy options.

6. Order Google to allow individuals reasonable access to their personal information, along with the ability to edit and delete that information.

7. Order Google to stipulate to never engage in behavioral tracking.

8. Further order Google not to sell personally identifiable information.

9. Order Google to implement a functional and secure system of anonymizing stored user data. Anonymized data remains traceable to the individual user, as demonstrated when America Online inadvertently leaked the search records of 658,000 Americans. Google must implement a technique that truly anonymizes this data, either by erasing more the last octet of the IP address, erasing the IP address completely, assigning randomized numbers to the data, or developing an alternative technique that will render tracing the data back to the individual source impossible.

10. Order Google to cease storage of IP addresses. The search engine functionality would not be impaired if a search engine did not store any user information at all.

11. Condition the merger on Google and DoubleClick maintaining separate databases of user information. Order Google to craft, disclose, and implement a security plan that will maintain, protect, or enhance the privacy, confidentiality, or security of all personally identifiable information.

12. Order Google to implement remedies and a system of accountability in the event of a breach, and to disclose to the public the extent to which it cannot or will not protect the privacy, confidentiality, and security of all personally identifiable information.

The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed the complaint with the FTC earlier this week urging a full investigation of online advertising practices in general, but targeted Microsoft because, in the groups’ estimation, the company’s tracking system is the most advanced.

The groups found Microsoft’s Hotmail service “especially disturbing” as the email service is used to bolster adCenter targeting by collecting information on 30 million monthly visitors.

In the filing, the groups complain that the FTC is behind the curve in dealing with data collection and interactive marketing systems used by Internet companies like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! to track, profile, and target users as they surf the Internet.

“Unfortunately, over the last several years the FTC has largely ignored the critical developments of the electronic marketplace that have placed the privacy of every American at risk,” said Jeff Chester, CDD executive director.

“The FTC should long ago have sounded a very public alarm–and called for action–concerning the data collection practices stemming from such fields as Web analytics, online advertising networks, behavioral targeting, and rich ‘virtual reality’ media, all of which threaten the privacy of the U.S. public.”

Among the concern is that current privacy disclosure policies are inadequate to inform users about what data are collected and how that data is used. The CDD and US PIRG strongly doubt that the information, as is claimed, is really non-personally identifying. This was illustrated by the recent AOL search data leak that led several news organizations to pieced together enough information to identify specific AOL users.

Last year, the Department of Justice subpoenaed all the major search engines, including MSN, AOL, Yahoo! and Google, asking them to release reams of search data collected as part of an effort to bolster legislation against child pornography. Google, the lone holdout among the search engines, was eventually ordered by a judge to turn over some information.

In spite of recent events, and a steady echo of privacy concerns in the blogosphere, the CDD and US PIRG say the FTC hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been going on in cyberspace.

“The emergence of this on-line tracking and profiling system has snuck up on both consumers and policymakers and is much more than a privacy issue,” said U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski.

“Its effect has been to put enormous amounts of consumer information into the hands of sellers, leaving buyer-consumers at risk of unfair pricing schemes and with fewer choices than the Internet is touted to provide.”

There are four specific requests made of the FTC:

launch an immediate investigation into the online marketplace

expose practices that compromise user privacy

issue the necessary injunctions to halt practices that abuse consumers

craft policies and recommend federal legislation to prevent such abuses.

“Microsoft, like Google and Yahoo, is actively rewriting the rules that govern the online marketplace,” said Chester. “It is the FTC’s job to make certain that these rules reflect more than corporate self-interest. The public interest matters, too, and it is the FTC’s responsibility to protect and promote that vital perspective, by issuing injunctions against the most egregious of the new invasive advertising practices, which are fully described in our complaint.”

Microsoft didn’t address the charges specifically, but reiterated its commitment to consumer privacy.

“Consumer trust is essential to the success of online business and helping protect consumers’ privacy is a top priority for Microsoft in our development and implementation of online services,” Microsoft Senior Attorney Mike Hintze told WebProNews.

“We are very open about our privacy policies and practices across all of our online services and advertising products because we believe that providing consumers with this type of transparency and control is extremely important, and it will continue to be a central focus of how we design and deliver online services both now and in the future.”

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