Concerned about the protection of citizens’ privacy, the European Commission’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Group published its Opinion on Data Protection Issues Related to Search Engines (1) earlier this month. In it, the working group expressed its concern about the protection of privacy in relation to data retention by search engines.
In layman’s terms, every time you search for something on Google or Yahoo! or any other search engines, they store bits and pieces of information about your search with the aim, so they say, to improve future search results, track trends and generally be able to respond adequately to changes in the search behaviour of users. Under the European Union’s own Data Retention Directive, data can be stored for up to two years. All search engines already store this data for shorter periods than that.
With the help of some hard-to-follow logic that is beyond the length of this column to repeat or explain, the EC working group claimed in its opinion that data retention by search engines does not fall under the EU Data Retention Directive and, therefore, should answer to a different set of rules. Its conclusion contained a list of requirements to protect citizens’ “fundamental rights” like “freedom of private life” and “freedom of expression”. The working group held that search engines had “insufficiently explained the nature and purpose of their operations” and that “the retention of personal data and the corresponding retention period must always be justified (with concrete and relevant arguments) and reduced to a minimum, to improve transparency, to ensure fair processing, and to guarantee proportionality with the purpose that justifies such retention”.
It is quite amazing to see how the working group went out of its way to separate data retention by a private entity from the same act of EU member state governments. Apparently, proportionality with the purpose that justifies retention and a reduction of the retention period to a minimum are not relevant when it comes to governments retaining data.
If a requirement of efficiency alone would be applied to government data retention, it would soon cease to exist. It will take years before efficiency data on government data retention will become available, but as an indication, we can look at the use of telephone taps. In Bulgaria, only two per cent of telephone taps performed make it into court. The percentage that leads to a conviction, without which one would not have been possible, is a lot smaller and approaches zero. These figures are similarly in the single-digit percentage range for other EU countries.
What the working group fails to address in its opinion is that in business, a failure rate of nearly 100 per cent usually means the end of a business practice. In government, however, it is sure to lead to a call for additional expansion of powers.
Back in Bulgaria, the Interior Ministry seems to have wisely decided that now is not an opportune time to introduce biometric passports. With the introduction of the passports, a discussion would be opened about fundamental rights to protection of privacy, about the collection of data in national databases and who would have access to those databases.
In what looks like a bid to massage public opinion about the ongoing Interior Ministry row, someone seems to have been doing some heavy leaning on state-owned national television to perform its unwritten duties as a ministry of information and propaganda.
Following the usual “we’re not the only ones who do this” argument, BNT started running promotional clips for a film that it would be broadcasting about government-level corruption in a West European country.
Nice timing.
