UK Privacy body to re-examine Google

The BBC reports that Britain's privacy watchdog is to look again at what personal information internet giant Google gathered from private wi-fi networks.


The Information Commissioner's Office had investigated a sample earlier this year after it was revealed that Google had collected personal data during its Street View project.

At the time, it said no "significant" personal details were collected.

But Google has since admitted that e-mails and passwords were copied.

Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11614970

Commission guilty of 'maladministration' over car company letters

EUobserver reports that the European Commission has been found guilty of ‘maladministration' by the EU ombudsman for a second time for having refused to release correspondence between itself and European car manufacturers.
"By failing to grant full access to the parts of the ‘briefings' relating to carbon dioxide emissions from cars, the commission committed an instance of maladministration," the ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, said in a 15-page assessment of the EU executive's stonewalling over the issue.

Read more here: http://euobserver.com/9/31002/?rk=1

EU takes Britain to court over online data protection

Accordint to EUobserver.com, the European Commission on Thursday (30 September) said it is to take the United Kingdom to court for not fully implementing data privacy rules for online users and allowing service providers to use "behavioural advertising" based on the websites visited by web surfers.

The legal case follows complaints from UK internet users who claim to have been spammed with ads as a result of so-called deep-packet inspections revealing the patterns of their daily online activities. Despite requests made last year by the commission, London has so far failed to amend its legislation so that it complies with EU law.

Read more here: http://euobserver.com/9/30935/?rk=1

Insurance policies should not be based on sex, EU jurist says

EUobserver.com writes that insurers should no longer take a person's sex into account when calculating policies, an advisor to the European Court of Justice said on Thursday (30 September), provoking anger in the industry, which adjusts life and health contracts according to whether they are for men or for women.
The preliminary opinion, by Advocate General Juliane Kokott, said that statistics showing different risks for the two sexes may not be used as a basis for treating men and women differently because they do not show an innate difference between them.

Read more here: http://euobserver.com/9/30941/?rk=1