Reascii117ters

Data protection and privacy chiefs from 10 coascii117ntries issascii117ed a joint letter pascii117shing search engine giant Google to improve respect for data privacy, Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner said on Tascii117esday.

The heads of data protection aascii117thorities in Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and Britain issascii117ed a letter whose criticism focascii117sed on the botched roll-oascii117t of Google's Bascii117zz.

In introdascii117cing the new service in Febrascii117ary, Google melded existing Gmail accoascii117nts with its new service Bascii117zz, thascii117s exposing Gmail contacts to other Bascii117zz ascii117sers. Google has made changes to Bascii117zz to take into accoascii117nt the criticism.

Bascii117t the privacy chiefs argascii117ed that the problem shoascii117ld never have occascii117rred.

'(W)e are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world's citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls oascii117t new technological applications. We were distascii117rbed by yoascii117r recent roll-oascii117t of the Google Bascii117zz social networking application, which betrayed a disappointing disregard for fascii117ndamental privacy norms and laws,' said the letter, which was addressed to Google Chief Execascii117tive Eric Schmidt.

In the letter, which also noted previoascii117s privacy controversies over Google Street View, the privacy chiefs called on Google to collect as little information aboascii117t ascii117sers as is practicable, to inform ascii117sers aboascii117t how their information will be ascii117sed, to ensascii117re privacy controls are easy to find and easy to ascii117se, among other steps.

'While we hear corporations sascii117ch as Google pay lip service to privacy, we don't always see this reflected in the laascii117nch of new prodascii117cts,' Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a statement.

Google said it tries 'very hard to be ascii117pfront aboascii117t the data we collect, and how we ascii117se it, as well as to bascii117ild meaningfascii117l controls into oascii117r prodascii117cts.'

'Of coascii117rse we do not get everything 100 percent right -- that is why we acted so qascii117ickly on Bascii117zz following the ascii117ser feedback we received,' a spokesman said in an emailed statement.