Regulator monitors Google's privacy policy

By Kim Yoo-chul

The nation’s top telecom regulator is checking on Google’s controversial privacy policy to see whether the search giant has followed its earlier promise to improve it.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) recently concluded that the company has yet to implement its recommendations regarding personal information and Street View after it agreed with the regulator to cooperate in a policy update in April 2012.

Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from positions along many streets in the world.

“We are reviewing whether Google is strictly following its earlier promises to improve its privacy policy. We hope Google will do more for Korea,” said a senior official at the KCC, asking not to be named.

“There are some issues that need to be addressed and improved,” he stressed.

The official recently ordered his team to request Google headquarters in the United States to improve its policy.

“We have kept asking them to improve it but Google is resisting, claiming that it has already done so,” he said. “It’s tough for the KCC to persuade Google to change its policy only for Korea because Google is pushing its policy globally,” said the official.

“Google ignored a request by the European Union to improve its policy. So we are monitoring whether Google violates local laws,” said the official.

But he stressed a full-scale investigation was unlikely for the time being as there was no evidence of this.

In a statement to The Korea Times, Google said: “Privacy and security matter to our users and to us, and we work hard to get them right. And we have always worked closely with government bodies to address their questions.”

Last year, the state agency investigated whether Google’s new policy that combines a user’s information across its services violated laws regarding domestic data protection and open use of the Internet.

After negotiations with the regulator, Google agreed to better inform domestic Internet users of how it will use their data and provide links to its existing services to allow them to control the information they share.

At that time, Google had issued a statement confirming it will provide additional information, helping Korean users understand its approach to privacy and pledged to answer questions and address other concerns.

“We are collaborating with regulators in other countries to cut concerns about the privacy policy. Korea won’t be excluded from the global change by Google,” another KCC official told The Korea Times, separately.

The KCC’s move comes after the search giant was fined by German’s privacy regulator over alleged illegally collecting Wi-Fi network data including usernames, passwords and website results.

Between 2008 and 2010, Google’s Street View mapping cars captured data from unsecured home and business Wi-Fi networks there, the regulator reopened the case after criminal prosecutors declined to take it.

“Google is the world’s No. 1 antitrust offender. Google has been found to violate antitrust law in many ways in the last five years and Google is, or has been, under antitrust investigation in nine different countries, in addition to the EU’s investigations of Google’s abuse of search and search advertising dominance, and abuse of standard essential patents,” said Scott Cleland, a well-known research analyst.

In a related note, the nation’s antitrust regulator is also in the process of investigating Google after it was sued by NHN and Daum Communications ― Korea’s top-ranked Internet portals ― over allegation it excludes NHN and Daum services from being accessed on smartphones powered by Android software.