The FTC can’t be trusted to adequately punish Google for its...

permission last month to file a friend-of-the-court brief criticizing the agency’s $22.5 million settlement with the company -- resolving its claims that Google violated the earlier Buzz consent order by bypassing privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser -- the vocal Google critic laid into the commission as “halfhearted and ineffectual” in its dealings with Google (http://xrl.us/bnq83o). The settlement is “so markedly deficient that it fails to meet the relevant legal standards of ‘adequacy’ and furthering ’the public interest,'” Consumer Watchdog said. A Google spokeswoman told us it was “confident that there is no basis for this challenge.” We couldn’t reach the FTC for comment. Commissioner Thomas Rosch dissented from the settlement on narrower grounds than those of Consumer Watchdog, mostly concerned that the fine was too small and Google was allowed to deny wrongdoing (CD Aug 10 p3). Consumer Watchdog put the settlement into the context of the commission’s past reviews of Google actions, which the brief refers to as “halfhearted and ineffectual attempts to make Google respect the privacy of Internet users,” starting with Wi-Spy. As German authorities, members of the U.S. Congress and even the FCC took Google to task for the episode with investigations and fines, it was “lights off” at the FTC, the brief said. The commission’s “okeydoke” consent order following the Buzz incident bound Google only to get permission from users before sharing data outside the company, not even for using data for a different purpose internally, Consumer Watchdog said. The FTC “ballyhooed” to the press and public a “comprehensive” privacy program foisted on Google that in reality “largely overlapped” Google’s own internal changes the year before, the brief said. The commission, in contrast to “howls of outrage” from Congress and other countries, “took no action” after Google said in January it would combine user information among Google services without user consent, it said. The Safari-circumvention settlement won’t “deter and prevent Google from additional violations of the Buzz decree,” despite the fact that the FTC’s initial complaint asked for such relief and the “proposed order’s caption and text clearly contemplate it,” Consumer Watchdog said. It echoed Rosch’s description of the $22.5 million fine as “de minimis” given Google’s revenue and noted that the commission itself said it could be “dismissed as insufficient.” Commission staff, “as before, immediately took to the airwaves” following Rosch’s criticism and that of other commentators, doing press calls and social-media chats, “all for the purpose of ’selling’ the notion” that the settlement “protected the public,” the brief said. Consumer Watchdog said it agrees with the FTC on one thing: The “most important question” is whether Google will follow the underlying Buzz settlement “going forward.” But the FTC is wrong to think it will, the brief said.