Rep. Joe Barton has questions for Google, as Declan McCullagh reports.

A top Republican in the House of Representatives is demanding that Google answer a barrage of questions about privacy, some of which are related to the company’s proposed purchase of the DoubleClick advertising firm.

Rep. Joe Barton, who has positioned himself as a privacy advocate and previously criticized the merger last month, complained in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt that the company had initially agreed to let his aides visit the so-called Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. but then didn’t confirm a date. Barton is the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has Internet regulation as one of its responsibilities.

The two men met in person on November 7 and the idea of a visit came up. But then, Barton said in his letter on Wednesday, “all efforts to reach a mutually agreeable time have been rebuffed, and it begins to seem that no date for a visit is sufficiently convenient to Google. Your warm initial invitation followed by Google’s chilly response to a proposed visit by Committee counsels is disconcerting.”

Most of the rest of Barton’s 24 questions deal with what Google does with search queries, how long information is kept, what data will be merged with DoubleClick’s, and how the company performs its partial anonymization of search results. Barton asks for a response by December 18. (Unlike Ask.com, AOL, and Microsoft, Google does not delete search-related queries after 12 to 18 months. See the chart on this page for details from a survey we performed in August.)

The article continues.

The search engine Ask.com is making a proactive move.

Ask.com will unveil on Tuesday a “privacy switch” that lets users completely erase their search queries and related data from the search engine’s servers.

The new feature, dubbed AskEraser, is believed to mark the first time that Internet users have been given control over whether their information is retained by a search engine. Company officials and privacy advocates hope the ” privacy switch” will pressure other Internet companies to follow suit.

“Anywhere that you log into, anywhere where you put in personalized information, there should be a way – an easy way – to control how that information is used and retained,” said

Doug Leeds, senior vice president at Ask.com, a unit of IAC/InterActive Corp. (IACI). “We are giving users the ability themselves to take control of their privacy.”

Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the public-policy group Center for Democracy and Technology, said he hoped AskEraser would force other search engines to respond. “As you start giving users more control on certain sites, we hope that sites pressure each other (to implement) privacy control as a competitive tool,” he said. But it wasn’t immediately clear whether AskEraser will reset the parameters of the ongoing debate over online privacy, given that usage of Ask.com continues to lag far behind that of its rivals. Ask.com accounted for just 2.9% of the U.S. search market in October behind Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Time Warner Inc.’s (TWX) AOL, according to research group Nielsen Online.More importantly, data that Ask.com erases will be first sent to Google, which recently signed a five-year contract to serve ads alongside Ask.com search results. Google is under no apparent obligation to erase any information it receives from Ask.com, even in cases in which the user switched on the AskEraser function.

The article continues. The New York Times poses the question, will privacy sell?

Ask.com is betting it will. The fourth-largest search engine company will begin a service today called AskEraser, which allows users to make their searches more private.

Ask.com and other major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. However, when AskEraser is turned on, Ask.com discards all that information, the company said.

Ask, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp based in Oakland, hopes that the privacy protection will differentiate it from more prominent search engines like Google. The service will be conspicuously displayed on Ask.com’s main search page, as well as on the pages of the company’s specialized services for finding videos, images, news and blogs. Unlike typical online privacy controls that can be difficult for average users to find or modify, people will be able to turn AskEraser on or off with a single click.

“It works like a light switch,” said Doug Leeds, senior vice president for product management at Ask.com. Mr. Leeds said the service would be a selling point with consumers who were particularly alert about protecting their privacy.

[...]

Some privacy experts doubt that concerns about privacy are significant enough to turn a feature like AskEraser into a major selling point for Ask.com. The search engine accounted for 4.7 percent of all searches conducted in the United States in October, according to comScore, which ranks Internet traffic. By comparison, Google accounted for 58.5 percent, Yahoo for 22.9 percent and Microsoft for 9.7 percent.

“My gut tells me that basically it is not going to be a competitive advantage,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, an independent research company “I think people will look at it and see it as a cool thing, and they may use it. But I don’t think it will be a market differentiator.”

Mr. Ponemon said many surveys showed that while about three in four Americans said they were concerned about privacy, their concern was not sufficient to make them change their behavior toward sharing personal information. About 8 percent of Americans were concerned enough about privacy to routinely take steps to protect it, the surveys showed.

“Privacy only becomes important to the average consumer when something blows up,” Mr. Ponemon said.

Of course, something has already blown up. Last year, AOL released the queries conducted by more than 650,000 Americans over three months to foster academic research. While the queries where associated only with a number, rather than a computer’s address, reporters for The New York Times and others were quickly able to identify some of the people who had done the queries. The queries released by AOL included searches for deeply private things like “depression and medical leave” and “fear that spouse contemplating cheating.”

The article continues discussing such privacy violations.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, has posted the anticipated announcement on Google’s Public Policy Blog:

The problem of international data flow and privacy is not new. Potential problems were identified as early as the 1980s. At that time, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) established the first “fair information principles.” Twenty years after they were first established, OECD guidelines are now but one voice in a large chorus of local privacy standards.

Google, increasingly under fire for its extensive collecting of user information is calling today for international privacy laws.

The proposal follows the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework, which has been endorsed by many of the APEC nations, including Australia and Hong Kong, but not all. China, for instance, does not endorse it, Fleischer said.

“Google believes we need to work together to create minimum global standards, partly by law and partly by self-regulation,” Fleischer said in a telephone conference call. “We need a collaboration between government and the private sector.”

The APEC framework “promotes a flexible approach to information privacy protection” and is a “practical policy approach to enable accountability in the flow of data while preventing impediments to trade,” according to the group’s fact sheet. The nine principles of the framework are: preventing harm; integrity of personal information; notice; security safeguards; collection limitations; access and correction; uses of personal information; accountability; and choice.

What does Google know about you? Concerned? Google has a lengthy privacy policy page.

Here’s a helpful chart from PCWorld.ca on what Google collects.

Service	Risks
Google Search	Privacy:Tying your search history to your browsing activities via the DoubleClick advertising network gives the company a much more detailed view of your online activities.
Gmail	Privacy:The routing information and content of your mail–including any attachments–reside unencrypted on Google servers. Legal liability: Loss of, or unauthorized access to, business correspondence increases your company’s legal exposure.
Google Docs and Spreadsheets	Privacy:Your files are stored unencrypted on Google servers. Legal liability: A business could be found negligent if it loses, or allows unauthorized access to, business documents. Loss of access: Until applications supporting Google Gears arrive, you lose access to your files when your Internet connection fails.
Picasa Web Albums	Privacy:Photographs in albums designated “unlisted” can still be viewed by anyone who knows the URL. Loss of access: At present you have no option to view or back up your albums offline.
Google Calendar	Privacy:Your daily schedule and associated information reside unencrypted on Google servers. Legal liability: Loss of, or unauthorized access to, business information puts your company at risk. Loss of access: You can’t open your calendar without an Internet link, although this will change with the arrival of the Google Gears browser extension.
Google Desktop	Privacy:If you neglect to lock the search function, anyone using your PC has access to your personal files. Legal liability: Copies of business documents may be stored on Google servers, making them susceptible to loss or unauthorized access.
Google Talk	Privacy:Instant-message logs can be archived and searched in Gmail.
Google Product Search	Privacy:A log of your product searches could be associated with your browsing history via the pending DoubleClick acquisition.

Here is one of Google’s instructional videos which explains how and why Google collects information when you search.