Google said they do: http://www.google.com.au/policies/privacy/frameworks/ *As described in our Safe Harbor certification<http://safeharbor.export.gov/companyinfo.aspx?id=16626>, we comply with the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework and the US-Swiss Safe Harbor Framework as set forth by the US Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use and retention of personal information from European Union member countries and Switzerland. Google has certified that it adheres to the relevant Safe Harbor Privacy Principles. To learn more about the Safe Harbor program, and to view Google’s certification, please visit the Safe Harbor website <http://export.gov/safeharbor/>.* I like the "relevant" in there. Not sure exactly what it means.
Other's say they don't: http://safegov.org/2013/4/4/european-safe-harbor-non-compliance-could-have-us-consequences FTC enforcement can be costly, including requirements for companies to allow independent monitoring of its privacy compliance for 20 years. So, connecting the dots: EU regulators have declared Google in violation of key privacy principles (and other cloud powerhouses are already, or soon will be, in the EU’s sights); such companies certify compliance with these principles in order to export data to the United States; and the EU regulators, *at least in the case of Google, have implicitly found these compliance certifications to be untrue.* On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote: > Google Drive: *They own your data*: >> > > This is really scary. Was someone talking about this a couple of months > ago and pointed out that Microsoft SkyDrive has a similar policy? Is this a > violation of International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles: US and EU > rules about protection of personal data? Or are these vendors/facilities > immune to this? > > All non-trivial files I put in Rackspace or SkyDrive are zipped with > strong encryption. I am unable to do the same with my Gmail contents as I > presume it's all stored in plaintext somewhere and they can search and > index it. I hope they don't "use, publish, distribute, etc" our emails. > > Greg K >
