A group of European data protection authorities, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, has today told the three major search engine operators -- Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! -- that they are still not doing enough to keep user search data anonymous, under the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC.
In particular, the Working Party said in a press release, external auditors need to be used to confirm the search operators' commitment to compliance, and data retention times need to be reduced to six months. The release continued:
In its letter to Google, the Working Party asks the company to cut the retention period from the current nine months to six months. Considering Google’s dominant position in almost every EU Member State, with a market share of up to 95% in some national search engine markets, the company has a significant role in European citizens’ daily lives. The company’s apparent lack of focus in data retention is concerning.
The Working Party contacted the search engine companies by letter, sending copies to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Viviane Reding, EC vice-president for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citzenship.
ZDNet UK has been in contact with the Working Party and all three companies asking for more details and responses, and will report on replies if and when received.
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Problem is your dealing with American companies, over there big is beautiful, and huge companies all too often tend to think they can do what the hell they like wherever they like.
Now if you'd posted this on the US Zdnet.com, within an hour you'd have had literally hundreds of rabid venomous responses along the lines of F**K Europe, how dare they tell Microsoft how to behave (I didn't make that up btw, it really is typical) .
Its like their big corporations are a surrogate monarchy, they get all patriotic & protective about them.
Does anyone know where I can find deep technical information about smart cards?. I'm doing a report for the company I'm working for.
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smart card
on google, select 'more' at top of screen, select scholar, then google 'smart cards'. This will give you a load of academic stuff about smart cards.