Celebrating Data Privacy Day
January 28th, 2010 | Published in Google Public Policy
Did you know that today is an international holiday, one that's celebrated in the U.S., Canada, and 27 countries in Europe? Known as Data Privacy Day in North America and Data Protection Day in Europe, today is meant to increase public awareness about privacy in the information age. To mark this occasion, on the Official Google Blog we've unveiled our Privacy Principles, which guide the decisions we make as we create products and services that offer transparency and control.
We've also been participating in several special industry events. Last Friday, Global Privacy Counsel Jane Horvath spoke on a panel at the University of North Carolina called, "Reader Privacy: Should Library Standards for Privacy Apply in the Digital World?" And today at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Law School, the Federal Trade Commission is holding the second of a three-part series of public roundtable discussions about the privacy issues raised by the innovations of the 21st century. Throughout the day, industry representatives, regulators, advocacy groups, and academics will be giving talks and appearing on panels about social networking, cloud computing, mobile computing and policy. Nicole Wong, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Google, will be appearing alongside representatives from other companies (including Facebook and LinkedIn) and advocacy groups on the day's second panel, "Privacy Implications of Social Networking and Other Platform Providers."
In Brussels, Google privacy and security engineer Alma Whitten appeared Wednesday on a panel at the European Parliament called "Awareness and Empowerment: The Role of Users in Privacy Protection." Today she is giving the very first Google Brussels TechTalk, offering an engineering point of view on online privacy. And on Friday, Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer will speak at the opening panel, "Forgetfulness and Data Retention," of the third annual Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Conference, of which Google is a sponsor.
You can learn more about our everyday efforts to empower users with transparency and choice at the Google Privacy Center and on our YouTube channel.