Although it has cooperated with the organization in the past, Google’s “global privacy chief” Peter Fleischer is now saying that the EU’s privacy watchdog group has no business making inquires into the search company’s data retention policies:

“Remember the Data Retention Directive comes out of the security side of government, not the data protection side,” said Fleischer. “So it’s interesting to me to hear what an official from the data protection world thinks about data retention, but it’s like asking somebody who works for the railroad what they think of airline regulation. It’s just not their field.” (Source: The Register)

Perhaps in a technical and/or legal respect Fleischer is right. When probed, Fleischer said that Google was bound by security directives and that data retention concerns should be addressed by the “security part” of the EU. But the EU itself says otherwise.

The issue here lies with the recommendations of the EU’s data protection watchdog group. According to that group, Google’s plan to retain identifiable information on its users for 18-24 months is too long. Google, on the other hand, says that it has to keep that data for at least 18 months because it is bound by the Data Retention Directive. But the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security - who oversees enforcement of such directives - says otherwise:

“The Data Retention Directive only covers providers of public electronic communications services or networks and it does not therefore cover providers of information society services. Search engines are providers of information society services rather than public electronic communication services/networks and are therefore outside the scope of the Directive,” a spokeswoman for the Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security told OUT-LAW.

“Moreover search queries are content, and not traffic or location data, and the Data Retention Directive does not cover content. The Commission has no plans to make search engines retain search queries,” she said.

This should be interesting to watch play out. Is Google trying to use the Data Retention Directive as an excuse? If, as The Register article contends, Google is making its own policy despite what any governments say… why don’t they just come out and say that?

What do you think? Is Google’s data retention term of 18 months too long? Would a shorter time period affect your liklihood to use Google?