Google Still Using E.U. Data Retention Ruse

Google's Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer continues to mislead the public about why Google keeps detailed logs on its customers searches and internet activity.

Google's policy is a complicated beast that keeps personally identifiable logs for all of its services globally 18 months, at which time Google attempts to anonymize the data by losing a few digits of the IP addresses of entries in the logs.

But let's reiterate: There is no United States or E.U. law that requires Google to keep detailed logs of what individuals search for and click on at Google's search engine. It's simply dishonest to continually imply otherwise in order to hide the real political and monetary reasons that Google chooses to hang onto this data.

Google is keeping the data because its engineers love mining the data and because holding onto the data makes law enforcement agencies happy. How often do law enforcement agents or lawyers in divorce cases show up at Google HQ with subpoenas?

For instance, it could stop issuing cookies to anonymous users that last for decades.

For instance on the user sign-up page, Google currently automatically enrolls users in to a system that records and analyzes everything they do on the Web, with zero explanation that the "feature" involves recording, in perpetuity, every url visited while logged into their Google account.