German minister warns Facebook over privacy rules

It doesn’t have quite the same high stakes as the Google-China showdown, but German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner’s broadside against Facebook’s user privacy policies is an interesting case. Via Der Spiegel, here’s an excerpt from her open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In particular, she takes issue with Facebook’s passing user data to ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

It doesn't have quite the same high stakes as the Google-China showdown, but German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner's broadside against Facebook's user privacy policies is an interesting case. Via Der Spiegel, here's an excerpt from her open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In particular, she takes issue with Facebook's passing user data to third parties and advertisers and its habit of changing its terms of use without telling users: 

It doesn’t have quite the same high stakes as the Google-China showdown, but German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner’s broadside against Facebook’s user privacy policies is an interesting case. Via Der Spiegel, here’s an excerpt from her open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In particular, she takes issue with Facebook’s passing user data to third parties and advertisers and its habit of changing its terms of use without telling users: 

As you know, I, in my capacity as Federal Minister of Consumer Protection, am striving to ensure that personal data on the Internet is protected. Private information must remain private – I think that I speak for many Internet users in this respect. Unfortunately, Facebook does not respect this wish, a fact that was confirmed in the most recent study by the German consumer organisation "Stiftung Warentest". Facebook fares badly in this study. Facebook was graded as "poor" in respect of user-data policy and user rights. Facebook also refused to provide information on data security – it was awarded a "5" (= poor) in this category as well. It is therefore all the more astounding that Facebook is not willing to eliminate the existing shortcomings regarding data protection, but is instead going even further. […]

Should Facebook not be willing to alter its business policy and eliminate the glaring shortcomings, I will feel obliged to terminate my membership.

I doubt Zuckerberg is trembling at the prospect of losing Ilse Aigner as a user, but she’s probably the highest profile official to voice complaints that are shared by quite a few users. In any event, this case blurs the traditional battle lines of Internet privacy debates in that it’s the popular company that wants to collect user data and the government that wants to protect it. 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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