New Facebook policy
conflicts with European law, concerns privacy advocates
By Craig Timberg, Updated:
Friday, November 23, 1:34 PM
Elements of Facebook’s
proposed new privacy policy conflict with European law, a key regulator said
Friday, as he moved to give users on the continent more power to block the
sharing of their data with the company’s affiliates, such as Instagram.
Regulators alerted
Facebook about the problem shortly after the company announced major changes to
how it will treat users’ personal data on Wednesday, said Gary T. Davis, deputy
data protection commissioner in Ireland. His office oversees Facebook
operations for all of Europe because the company’s headquarters for the
continent are in Dublin.
The proposed policy also
drew criticism from American privacy advocates, who said that the changes would
make more data available to advertisers without users’ explicit consent, in
violation of last year’s consent decree between Facebook and the Federal Trade
Commission. The agreement stemmed from complaints about the company’s handling
of personal data.
“Facebook is not really
telling users what this means and how this is going to work,” said Jeff
Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. His group is
planning to join the Electronic Privacy Information Center in filing a
complaint with the FTC about the proposed Facebook policy changes. The agency
declined to comment on Friday.
In Ireland, Davis
expressed confidence that the company would make revisions, giving European
users the right to explicitly accept or reject data-sharing with affiliates
such as Instagram. Facebook acquired the company for $1 billion in April, but
it remains a separate legal entity.
“We’ve already engaged
with Facebook,” Davis said. “We expect Facebook to be reverting [to previous
policies] on these issues.”
When the changes to the
policy were announced, public attention focused on a related shift that would
eliminate a system allowing the company’s users to vote on proposed new
policies. But Irish regulators were more concerned about how the company
handles personal data.
Data regulators from
Europe and several other regions in October sharply criticized Google for
revisions to its privacy policy after the company began allowing more extensive
sharing of personal information across a range of its services, such as Gmail,
YouTube and the Chrome browser.
Facebook spokesman Andrew
Noyes said in an e-mail on Friday: “As our company grows, we acquire businesses
that become a legal part of our organization. Those companies sometimes operate
as affiliates. We wanted to clarify that we will share information with our
affiliates and vice versa to help improve our services and theirs.”
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