Google faces lawsuit for snooping which would even embarrass spooks

One Napoleon wanted to conquer the Commonwealth Empire, but this one only wants to topple Google. We’re not too sure which mission is more difficult.

San Diego resident Napoleon Patacsil has filed a lawsuit against Google following the revelation the internet giant was continuing to track user location after the user had opted out from location tracking services. Patacsil is suing for unspecified damages and class-action status on behalf of US users. The San Francisco court will first have to decide whether he has a case, and then whether he can take forward the class action suit.

“Google itself assured individuals that they could prevent Google from tracking them by disabling a feature called ‘location history’ on their devices,” the filing reads. “Google represented that a user ‘can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the place you go are no longer stored’. This is simply not true.”

The filing claims Google’s conduct falls short of reasonable expectations of not only privacy, but the trust which is placed in a business in a valuable position in the data economy. The privacy debacle could lead Google down a path towards PR disaster, though should the firm be found to be directly misleading users, this could evolve into a completely new saga.

While it does appear Google has quietly altered the support page detailing it might still collect location data since the revelation, there might be a way for Google to squirm out of any wrong doing. We suspect Google has given itself permission to continue to collect data, despite the opt-out, in terms of use. It would like be buried down, and thanks to some creative legal work, it might not have to have told users it was making the changes. As users accept the terms and conditions before using a device, they have effectively opted-in.

That said, explicitly telling the user it would not collect data is directly misleading. This is a massive no-no when it comes to consumer confidence, ethical behaviour and what the company can do legally. There might be a few regulators throughout the US keeping an eye on the situation here. An investigation would not be a massive surprise.

While multi-national corporations making money by any means possible is nothing new, the Silicon Valley firms have always considered themselves above such human desires. These were companies which only existed to make our lives better, and they certainly had the advertising budgets to tell us how wonderful they actually are. The last couple of months are starting to create an image of Silicon Valley firms similar to the investment banks who caused the financial collapse in 2008.

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica saga, alongside Twitter’s initial refusals to silence Infowar’s resident lunatic Alex Jones, Google’s war-mongering ambitions for AI and this Big Brother impression are not doing Silicon Valley’s reputation any favours.