EU Watchdog Warns of Privacy Problems with Google-Fitbit Deal; But What About Data-opoly?
Privacy Plus+
Privacy, Technology and Perspective
EU Watchdog Warns of Privacy Problems with Google-Fitbit Deal; But What About Data-opoly? This week, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) issued a statement about Google’s plan to acquire Fitbit, warning of privacy risks associated with the acquisition of the health and activity data of millions of Fitbit users. In its statement, the EDPB advised the European Commission:
“There are concerns that the possible further combination and accumulation of sensitive personal data regarding people in Europe by a major tech company could entail a high level of risk to the fundamental rights to privacy and to the protection of personal data.”
You can read the full statement by clicking on the following link:
Google insists the EDPB’s concerns are unwarranted, professing in the following blog post that “Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads”:
https://www.blog.google/products/hardware/agreement-with-fitbit/
In our view, the health and wellness data isn’t Fitbit’s. That data belongs to Fitbit’s users. If past foretells the future, however, then a question remains about whether Google will serve up Fitbit’s users’ health and activity data for ads once the merger is complete. Recall that in 2012 and 2013, Google paid nearly $40 million to settle charges that it had lied to users about how it would track their online behavior following the company’s acquisition of DoubleClick.
Moreover, Google is pressing forward with its massive data collection efforts despite ongoing investigations by Congress, state attorneys general, and federal antitrust regulators. We have written before on Google’s Project Nightingale where one of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital networks is granting Google free access to millions of complete, non-anonymized patient records in an effort to train an AI platform. You can read that post by clicking the link that follows:
https://www.hoschmorris.com/privacy-plus-news/privacy-plus-googles-project-nightingale-do-no-harm
Will Google now use “metrics like the number of steps you take, your distance traveled, calories burned, weight, heart rate, sleep stages, active minutes…[and your] precise geolocation data” in furtherance of ads, AI, surveillance, and/or predictive analytics? It’s a good question. And note that previous quote about the types of data that Fitbit collects comes straight out of Fitbit’s privacy notice, a link to which follows:
https://www.fitbit.com/us/legal/privacy-policy
In a separate but related issue, Google presents not just a privacy problem but a competition issue, especially in view of its proposed Fitbit merger. “Data is the new gold” (or “oil” as we say in Texas), as the saying goes. So how much data (gold) can Google collect before it becomes a “data-opoly?” Is it already a “data-opoly?” Is it time to have a market that monitors and regulates the aggregation of “market share” in personal data? We wonder, and certainly wouldn’t mind having those dividends.
---
Hosch & Morris, PLLC is a Dallas-based boutique law firm dedicated to data protection, privacy, the Internet and technology. Open the Future℠.