Senator Franken blasts Google, Facebook over privacy policy
updated 04:30 pm EDT, Fri March 30, 2012
Al Franken speaks out about privacy breaches
Senator Al Franken on Thursday spoke (PDF) at the American Bar Association's Antitrust Section, pleading for more government supervision of large media and technology firms. This would ensure greater privacy to Americans, and the chair of the Senate subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law specifically named Google and Facebook as the major threats. Franken said consumers don't have any legal protection when it comes to their personal information.
"The more dominant these companies become, the less incentive they have to respect your privacy," he said.
Privacy protection consumers enjoy against government intrusions don't extend to corporations, Franken stated. Google's new privacy policy, which Franken used as an example, lets them user personal information available from its suite of services to target ads to users. And as they become larger, Franken continued, these companies are more likely to cross privacy lines that would make them extremely profitable in targeted advertising.
He also spoke out against the NBC and Comcast merger as well as AT&T's attempted purchase of T-Mobile. [via The Verge]
