Google, Microsoft Top OTI Index of Privacy Policy Transparency
Google ranked highest on New America’s Open Technology Institute’s Ranking Digital Rights index of 16 major global Internet and telecom companies on commitments and transparency on users’ privacy and freedom of expression. But RDR Director Rebecca MacKinnon said that “there are no winners” among the ranked companies. Google scored an overall 65 percent on RDR’s Corporate Accountability Index, released Tuesday, ranking at the top on privacy policies and disclosure of restrictions of users’ freedom of expression. “If this were a test, they’d be getting a D,” MacKinnon said of Google during a joint RDR-Civic Hall event to mark the index’s release.
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Yahoo placed second on the RDR index with 58 percent, ranking just behind Microsoft in public commitments but behind Google in both freedom of expression and privacy. Microsoft placed third on the index with 56 percent, topping the ranking for public commitments and second on privacy, but near the middle on freedom of expression. Vodafone placed fourth at 54 percent, while AT&T and Twitter tied for fifth at 50 percent. Facebook, the only other U.S.-based company on the index, ranked eighth at 41 percent. RDR said it developed the index rankings with Sustainalytics by evaluating companies’ policy statements based on the U.N.'s Guiding Principle on Business and Human Rights and other international human rights frameworks. RDR said its index doesn’t evaluate any company’s implementation of its policies. RDR said it selected the 16 measured companies based on the companies’ geographic reach and diversity, company size, market share and user base.
MacKinnon said the 2015 version of the index should be viewed the same way as “a test you take at the start of the class” to determine what needs to be learned. Any company that scored above 30 percent on the index “was making some degree of effort to respect users’ rights,” MacKinnon said. The seven companies that scored below 30 percent -- including America Movil and six companies based in Africa, Asia and the Middle East -- appeared to be making “very little effort” to be transparent on privacy issues, she said. The Computer & Communications Industry Association and CTIA, which represent many of the Internet and telecom companies listed in the RDR index, didn’t comment. Google and the Internet Association didn't immediately comment.
RDR urged all companies to improve their transparency on how information collected from users is used and to communicate information “that all stakeholders can understand.” Companies should also demonstrate a “credible commitment” to security and protecting user rights, including carrying out due diligence of how their services impact users’ rights, RDR said. The group also recommended establishing “effective” mechanisms for users to file grievances for violations of their freedom of expression and privacy. “We must all advocate for legal and regulatory changes that enable companies to respect users’ freedom of expression and privacy,” RDR said. “We must work together to build legal, regulatory, and corporate standards that make it possible to protect and respect human rights.”
The RDR index “underscores what a lot of us have been saying all along -- that even the so-called best of these companies really aren’t doing enough to respect user rights,” said Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson in an interview. “For the most part, many of these companies’ business models are based on invading users’ privacy and getting you to share information that you might not normally do or not being fully clear about what they’re gathering.” The RDR index also shows “the need for fundamental change and enactment of some baseline privacy legislation,” particularly to rein in data broker practices, Simpson said.